Then I got to thinking. There are levels of authority associated with different types of materiality that can be exploited and abused. I think this is why print has lasted for as long as it has: books have a history of being sacred, and of being reliable. Hand lettering bibles, even hand-setting the printing presses all took a lot of time and took a lot of effort and therefore equaled a lot of money. People only printed things that were really really really important (e.g. 'Bibles').
Today, when we are culturally glutted with words and have to make decisions (whether conscious or not) about what we read and, even more than that, what out of all that we read we pay attention to, those decisions are dictated largely not by the content itself (that would take too long), but by the way the content reaches us. And generally, we have a culturally reinforced tendency to believe that texts that are in a form that has taken more money and effort to produce are more worthwhile.
Think about it. We give a lot more credibility to hardbound, professionally published books than we do to the flimsy-feeling, generic-font covered self-published books. Most of us can't really explain why, or at least not well. Yet obviously people care enough to self-publish despite this. Mediocre physicality is still more respected than the alternative. That alternative, obviously, is the digital. If you think about online content, the vast majority of sources deemed 'credible' have some physical counterpart in some way. Even if a Wired or a New Yorker article has never been published in print, the fact that their company is a print publication makes their online content 'credible'. Personal blogs or forums or, gasp, Wikipedia? Forget about it.
| *And by 'Patrick' he means 'Digital media' |
Further examples of this abound; people tend to take movies in theaters (A building) more seriously than on DVD (a thing) and those on DVD more seriously than Netflix. People tend to take photos framed in a gallery more seriously than photos in an album, and photos in an album more seriously than photos on our phones. Music live on stage is 'better' than an album, which is 'better' than listening to the song on Youtube. You can probably think of your own examples.
I think, as corporeal beings, we'll always have an inclination to nod towards the things that are most like us—that have some body themselves that we can hold in our hands or pound our fists against. I think that's where the little romantic niggle in me will always have a soft spot for paper. Yes, it kills trees and it takes energy and is inefficient and heavy and prone to damage, etc etc. All this is true. But. It is also a thing, an honest to god thing that you can hold in your hands because someone cared enough to manufacture it. That intention and remnant of craftmanship exists even in something as trivial as a final paper submitted online versus in person. Could human culture eventually shift to honor digital things as much as actual things? I won't say no. But I think we're going to have to become substantially less corporeal as beings before that has a chance of happening. As it is, we are 'here' and digital stuff is 'there'. If we become more digital— or if digital things become more like us— that's when I could logically see things start to shift.
In the meantime, I'll be next to my bookshelf.
I really liked your thought process here. I am wondering if people don't respond well to online texts and self-published books or if people don't look for meaningful texts in these formats. In my subconscious, biased mind, I think that anything worth reading has likely been published by an important (or even lesser known) company. This, however, is likely very untrue. One of my professors told our class that the likelihood of a new writer getting published is less than 1%, Maybe these self-published and online writers have profound, paradigm shifting things to say, but are aware of these odds (or have been rejected many times before). While I realize that you are not saying good writing doesn't exist in self-published books or online texts, I think it's important to consider that cultural behavior that suggests this. As new media writing becomes more and more prevalent in our society, it is likely that these texts may be more appreciated in the future. So many things are being computerized that it is slowly becoming a norm. Even digital books (via kindles, iPads, etc.) are almost the "norm", especially for personal reading (though there are many people that prefer to hold a book in their hands as opposed to a device). So, in summary, I agree with what you're saying, though I believe a shift is occurring toward computerized text (think about the shift from handwritten books to the printing press) that will eventually call for the same respect that traditional published texts do now.
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