Novelist Scarlett Thomas reviews Jeff Gomez's Print Is Dead in the Guardian. Some excerpts:
I've used computers since I was nine years old. I have word-processed every significant document I've ever written. I own an iPod (actually, two) and waste time on Facebook when I should be working. I even have a BlackBerry. But in the frame of reference set out by this book, I am a living anachronism because I still cling to the "silly" and "old-fashioned" idea that when you want to read something important it's best to have it in front of you on a piece of paper, or in a book. Perhaps I hang out with too many old people, but I don't know anyone who wouldn't agree with me. [...]
The argument set out in this book is quite simple. Times have changed, and while old folk like me persist in buying CDs before putting them on our iPods, and using the Internet to buy, rather than experience, "content", there is something out there called "Generation Download" that does, like, everything on a computer, and will "ditch the hardback and head over to Facebook" because books are, like, not interactive enough, and too long, and have, like, "boring bits". Wouldn't it be great if books could be freed from their restrictive old dustjackets and people could download only the bits of them they want (the maypole scene from Fanny Hill perhaps?) and carry whole libraries of these bits on their iPhones and "experience" – or even shuffle – this "content" whenever and wherever they want? [...]
Do these brats really exist? I've never met one. Perhaps they all live in America. But if they do exist, surely we don't want to reinvent books to please them?
Link: Print Is Dead (review) (via Bookslut)
I don't think this weakens Thomas's point, but it seems like those brats exist in Japan, actually: In Japan, cellular storytelling is all the rage (Sydney Morning Herald, via TechCrunch).
Scarlett Thomas's novels are excellent, by the way. I particularly recommend PopCo.
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