(no subject)
i really am a luddite at heart and suspect i always will be. i'm 3/4 of my way through a long article detailing why finishing off "last of the summer wine" after only 37 years was remarkably short sighted of the BBC and now i read this. it's the bit at the end by simon winchester that interests me. even though winchester may have forgotten how to write properly these last few years, he is a writer i have enormous respect for. anyway, he claims at the end of this article about the end of print runs of the complete oxford english dictionary that “Books are about to vanish; reading is about to expand as a pastime; these are inescapable realities.”
i can believe this is true. i can also believe well and truly that i won't be on board this bandwagon. i have an ipod now and have paid for... precisely no downloads. and how many downloads will i ever pay for? precisely none. i never have done and never will. i only download records that are out of print or impossibly rare. if i see them as an official cd (or vinyl) then i'll buy it. never for a download though. i just don't see the point. my ipod is fantastically useful because i can do things like my ridiculous never ending shuffle project - nearly 9000 songs into a year long attempt to see how far into my ipod i can get. i don't have to lug around cds to work and i can be constantly amused and surprised by how i go from windy and carl to flanders and swann. i also can take it and my ipod dock on holiday and not have to worry about what i pack with me. but downloads rather than an actual physical object?
sigh
we're on over capacity at the moment in our house. there's too many books and too many records. i'm having to cull stuff i'd really rather keep hold of to make space. theoretically having all i love in a tiny form i can keep hold of so i can later MAKE that space freed up by replacing physical for virtual would make terrific sense. but will i do it? will i bollocks. i really like one thing about my ipod - it's small and easy to carry. i'd rather i didn't have the whirly wheel thing on it and it looked a bit more old fashioned. i don't care about how intuitive or how design friendly it might be because i don't really give a flying poo about those things - any record player that isn't a gramophone looks a bit ugly to me. and as for replacing a book with a flat screen "thing" - what's the point in that? seriously! why would you do that?
in all honesty this doesn't worry me. if the book is on the way out, i imagine there'll be enough publishers putting out bespoke editions of stuff to keep the likes of me happy in the same way that when vinyl was uncool people still churned the stuff out for collectors. an electronic version of those books would have less than no interest for me at all. a computer is and always will be a tool for me. it does stuff for me better than i can do myself. it's a means to an end. but it's still only a means...
let's look at my last few book purchases according to librarything:
The Funny Thing by Wanda Gag
(a fantastic old kid's book about a "funny thing" that eats children's dolls. the delight is in the text AND illustation together and would be severely lacking on a computer screen i fancy)
Various issues of the Spirit Magazine by Will Eisner
(my local comics shop's owner in hebden is getting rid of stuff to make space for new stuff. chief among them are oodles of back issues of the 1980s spirit magazine. i'm sure i could find these online. and then what would i do? print them off. call me old fashioned but i like to look at images in any way i see fit, not on a screen)
Agatha Christie: First Lady of Crime by H.R.F. Keating
(bought not because of my love for agatha - heaven forfend! - but because of the contributers: colin wilson, julian symons, edmund crispin, keating himself. it adds to my crime reference shelf. not my crime reference drive. the delight is in picking it up and idly flicking to a new page, not idly choosing a page to scan from. that... doesn't really sound like it could be delightful at all)
Essential Ant Man TPB: 1 by Stan Lee
(big, cheap, ugly rendering of better quality comics i could find online. but again, images i can look at ANY TIME i like. who takes a kindle into the bath?)
Morris Louis by Michael Fried
(more art books - as above. can find them online, but when looking for inspiration you want to potter and find. all my found images i collect from google reader go into a big images file on my desktop which i inevitably print off when needed for research. call me old fashioned but to see an image on paper is infinitely more impressive than a bunch of pixels)
my cd list is pretty much the same. i have too many records, but i kind of want to know what they're physically about. it matters to me to see who designs sleeves or who plays second harpsichord on a record. i like sleevenotes. it's all in the discovery. having something convenient isn't what art is about. art is about - to me - beauty. and convenience isn't very beautiful
just because you can doesn't mean you should. just because something is easier doesn't mean it's better
people have been arguing with me on this matter for years and i still stick by my views: even if no more books are published, there's enough in this world to keep me occupied until i die. second hand book shops in one form or another will always exist. and what's going to work better for you? a striking book cover seen on a shelf or some image to download?
like i said, i'm born a luddite. quite happy to be one too actually...
i can believe this is true. i can also believe well and truly that i won't be on board this bandwagon. i have an ipod now and have paid for... precisely no downloads. and how many downloads will i ever pay for? precisely none. i never have done and never will. i only download records that are out of print or impossibly rare. if i see them as an official cd (or vinyl) then i'll buy it. never for a download though. i just don't see the point. my ipod is fantastically useful because i can do things like my ridiculous never ending shuffle project - nearly 9000 songs into a year long attempt to see how far into my ipod i can get. i don't have to lug around cds to work and i can be constantly amused and surprised by how i go from windy and carl to flanders and swann. i also can take it and my ipod dock on holiday and not have to worry about what i pack with me. but downloads rather than an actual physical object?
sigh
we're on over capacity at the moment in our house. there's too many books and too many records. i'm having to cull stuff i'd really rather keep hold of to make space. theoretically having all i love in a tiny form i can keep hold of so i can later MAKE that space freed up by replacing physical for virtual would make terrific sense. but will i do it? will i bollocks. i really like one thing about my ipod - it's small and easy to carry. i'd rather i didn't have the whirly wheel thing on it and it looked a bit more old fashioned. i don't care about how intuitive or how design friendly it might be because i don't really give a flying poo about those things - any record player that isn't a gramophone looks a bit ugly to me. and as for replacing a book with a flat screen "thing" - what's the point in that? seriously! why would you do that?
in all honesty this doesn't worry me. if the book is on the way out, i imagine there'll be enough publishers putting out bespoke editions of stuff to keep the likes of me happy in the same way that when vinyl was uncool people still churned the stuff out for collectors. an electronic version of those books would have less than no interest for me at all. a computer is and always will be a tool for me. it does stuff for me better than i can do myself. it's a means to an end. but it's still only a means...
let's look at my last few book purchases according to librarything:
The Funny Thing by Wanda Gag
(a fantastic old kid's book about a "funny thing" that eats children's dolls. the delight is in the text AND illustation together and would be severely lacking on a computer screen i fancy)
Various issues of the Spirit Magazine by Will Eisner
(my local comics shop's owner in hebden is getting rid of stuff to make space for new stuff. chief among them are oodles of back issues of the 1980s spirit magazine. i'm sure i could find these online. and then what would i do? print them off. call me old fashioned but i like to look at images in any way i see fit, not on a screen)
Agatha Christie: First Lady of Crime by H.R.F. Keating
(bought not because of my love for agatha - heaven forfend! - but because of the contributers: colin wilson, julian symons, edmund crispin, keating himself. it adds to my crime reference shelf. not my crime reference drive. the delight is in picking it up and idly flicking to a new page, not idly choosing a page to scan from. that... doesn't really sound like it could be delightful at all)
Essential Ant Man TPB: 1 by Stan Lee
(big, cheap, ugly rendering of better quality comics i could find online. but again, images i can look at ANY TIME i like. who takes a kindle into the bath?)
Morris Louis by Michael Fried
(more art books - as above. can find them online, but when looking for inspiration you want to potter and find. all my found images i collect from google reader go into a big images file on my desktop which i inevitably print off when needed for research. call me old fashioned but to see an image on paper is infinitely more impressive than a bunch of pixels)
my cd list is pretty much the same. i have too many records, but i kind of want to know what they're physically about. it matters to me to see who designs sleeves or who plays second harpsichord on a record. i like sleevenotes. it's all in the discovery. having something convenient isn't what art is about. art is about - to me - beauty. and convenience isn't very beautiful
just because you can doesn't mean you should. just because something is easier doesn't mean it's better
people have been arguing with me on this matter for years and i still stick by my views: even if no more books are published, there's enough in this world to keep me occupied until i die. second hand book shops in one form or another will always exist. and what's going to work better for you? a striking book cover seen on a shelf or some image to download?
like i said, i'm born a luddite. quite happy to be one too actually...