Post 2: What is a book?

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.