As easy on the eyes as paper – On books and e-readers

E-readers are the way of the reading future, seemingly whether we like it or not. But are digital books an attempt to fix a reading experience that isn’t broken?

I once worked in an art museum where my primary role was to stop people from touching the works. Of course, it didn’t say it like that on the job description, but that was the reality. Viewed as a social experiment it was telling – not only were people blind to prominent signs requesting that they not touch things, there were also obvious differences in the ways people engaged with what they saw.

There were two clear groups. The first would stop and stare, the workings of their mind clear on their face as they contemplated the artwork. And then there were the people it was our job to look out for: those who would raise an arm to do more than just point.

At first I found it inexplicable. That somebody, to aid their understanding of it, would actually put their hand on an artwork worth a large sum of money, something there was only one of, was insanity. But it happened with horrifying regularity. Multiple times a day, people reached out and touched to help them understand.

The internet has already changed our reading habits, putting on the computer screen what we used to hold in our hands. There seems to be general agreement that this change is incomplete and must continue, as if it’s still in the chrysalis stage and some other element is needed to turn it into the beautiful, digital butterfly it is bound to become. E-readers appear to be that element, whether we like it or not.

E-readers are not holograms. While they require your favourite novels being turned into bits of data, they are an attempt to put the digital back in tangible form. But how will this compare to the bound lump of paper, so comfortable in our hands, we call the book?

Part of the experience of reading is going into a book store, perusing the shelves and finding a book I’m interested in. I look at the front cover, scan the back, maybe I find the first page and begin to read. I enjoy that very tactile experience.

But is that just me? Australians historically have welcomed new technology with arms open a surprising width. High definition television is broadcasting to households across the land and we possess some of the highest rates of internet usage per capita in the world. If recent Christmas sales figures are anything to go by, we also buy a lot of books. All the indicators point to e-readers being a success here.

The e-book and reader brings into question the role of technology. In the past, technological advancements were actual advancements. Now, the aim seems to be to make things technologically different, yet similar. A case in point is the apparent need to make e-reader screens easy on the eyes – easier on the eyes than bright computer screens. As easy on the eyes as paper.

MP3 players are everywhere because carrying around a portable CD player and a stack of CDs was impractical. Any dedicated jogger had the feeling, as their Discman endlessly skipped in their sweaty hands, that there had to be something better. Any device which fixes these problems while holding every song in your entire catalogue is pretty darn handy.

Which is all a long way of saying there was if not a need for it, then a demand. It was a logical next step.

However, I am yet to meet anybody who has lamented being unable to carry around their personal library, or who believes the experience of reading words from a book needs to be improved.

Most recently I read Peter Carey’s Parrot and Olivier in America and Albert Camus’s The Outsider concurrently. I read such dissimilar books because Camus’s book is a flimsy 117 pages – so small a strong wind would blow it from my grip – and Carey’s is a 450-page hardcover – attractive but terribly impractical for carrying around. I am a devoted reader, so switching between the two – reading Camus on my way to work, Carey in bed at night – was not a problem. For some, maybe it would be.

Which brings me to my next point. The iPod is the logical analogy to draw upon when discussing e-readers as it was the first successful (success seems like a weak term for something that has sold in such vast quantity – catching a pancake after you’ve flipped it is a success) portable digital device. It forced a change in mode and delivery and created a revolution in the digital space.

Not only is there an expectation that Apple will develop the mother of e-readers, there is an expectation the successful e-reader will do something similar to the world that the iPod did.

Although I’m quite fond of my own library, I don’t access it all that much. Maybe being able to do so with the touch of a button will make us all hyper-literate and spontaneous public readings of everything ranging from Hamlet to Harry Potter on trains the world over will become common. If so, cool. But the possibility of being able to carry around my library, or a large portion of it, everywhere I go is not an idea I find attractive.

When Coca-Cola released the first incarnation of its energy drink Mother, they flooded the market. When it turned out nobody liked it, they reformulated it then again flooded the market – this time with cans double their original size and a label that assured buyers it ‘tastes nothing like the old one!’ It appears that if there is no call for a certain product but you’re a big enough company, the strategy is this: flood the market and hope you create a need.

So even if we’re all quite satisfied with the trusty old book, it’s likely we’ll soon be wondering how we ever did without the e-reader.

Digital readers also break the rule of synthesis. A number of media outlets have already called 2010 the year of the e-reader, seemingly for no other reason than a lot of companies are developing them – there are some impressively sleek designs – and because 2010 needs to be the year of some sort of technology. Yet there is little a gadget like the iPhone does not do, especially when we’re talking about the merging of separate elements into a single digital device. It’s a phone, multimedia player, video camera, still camera and clock. It’s an email client and web browser. With a quick visit to Apple’s App Store, it’s also an e-book reader and countless other things.

It seems crazy to take a step back and create a completely separate device to read the formerly printed word. In this sense, e-readers are already old technology.

Of course, the fact a technology is old doesn’t make it bad – the book is well and truly ancient. The Gutenberg press, and thus the invention of movable type, is over 500 years old. The origins of book binding can be traced back to the first century AD. That little has changed in millennia may indeed be a limitation of technology – or maybe we just like the feel of a good book in our hands.

Lead Igloo

Related posts:

1. A further thought regarding e-readers, pertaining particularly to newspapers