What is a book?
A book is a realm
into another universe, a new dementia to explore and conquer. The physicality of
the book arouses our senses, excited our psyche about another experience we are
about to immerse ourselves into. With a book, pages become time machines into
new places we haven’t yet discovered. Places of hardships or creatures of
fantasy and nothing can quite beat the unique smell of new freshly printed
pages.
Today’s technological world threatens the traditional use of
physical books. Human have used books since the dawn of time from hieroglyphics
that told stories to handwritten or printed copies of them. Our twenty—first century
technologies threaten this tradition human practice of kindles and online
readers. Most authors and older habitual
readers would tend to fight for the physical book while younger generations will become
more adaptable to the megapixels of words on a elcetronic device. But are these ways of reading really
different? Are books just the old horse and buggy way of doing things now?
Tom Piazza Said, “The computer
is neutral in that it gives you access to limitless amounts of information… The
information has no smell, no weight, no texture. Nothing that seriously
impinges on your reality. People think it represents some kind of democratizing
of information because everything is the
same size… If everything is the same size, there’s no perspective… Everything
becomes two-dimensional, flat.”
So the important question is, what will life be without physical
books? Will the electricity we are so dependent on now last for the generations
to come? If we are sent back into the dark ages, will there be books for
children and adults to read? Will the names of important authors and stories be
lost forever? Will physical books become scarce and more expensive and valued? Would a black market for books arise?
Will the book survive? I
guess that is up for you own interpretation. However I believe as long as there
are intellectuals and individuals alike who enjoy a good story telling read
about the triumph of the human journey or informational pages of the depths of
our universe there will be books.