I bet you haven’t even read one Ann Coulter book.

I too smell a bit of hyperbole in Piper’s statements. If I read on a screen and you read a paperback, are we going to have a different connection with the writing? I don’t think so.

I agree physical books are not going to disappear in the next few years, but over time I think they have to. Technology changes.

While I’m one who grew up with the substantial weight of a book in his hands and the sweet-tangy aroma of old paper and ink softly touching his nostrils, my children will not have any such nostalgic attachments to paper.

And there are many advantages to digital if you can get past illogical preferences.

One often hears pundits and the like refer to e-books as ‘non-linear.’ Whenever I read that, the first thing I think is ‘you haven’t actually spent a lot of time reading on screen, have you?’ Because the whole e-book experience is nothing if not linear. Any method of reading that limits you to looking at only one page (or one spread) at a time is hierarchical and highly structured. In a ‘traditional’ printed book, it’s very simple to check pages 7, 240, 63, 89, and the endnotes at the back in such short order that it’s almost simultaneous. Try and do that on your iPad.

Choose Your Own Adventure

The importance of books is in the quality of the writing, illustrations, and design (the ideas) within them, not the medium itself (sorry, Marshall).

“All ideas become equal. There’s no inherent structure to ideas.”
It’s depressing that academics get paid to spout such sophomoric silliness.

I probably shouldn’t venture into the waters of trying to steady the reception one’s ideas can take via interviews via blogs, but:

Piper did not say “every single e-book automatically becomes postmodern just by virtue of it being digital.” Those words are someone else’s.

Piper did not say “there is a huge shift happening.” He said when you get caught up in the news you feel like there is. Those words are someone else’s.

Piper also did not say “there’s no inherent structure to ideas”, he said “there’s no inherent structure to ideas in a database versus a printed book.” That’s the nature of databases and principles like random access memory that are much less hierarchically organized than books. Those words were left out by the interviewer.

Piper did not say that the page will no longer be the primary interface for reading, he said the page will no longer be the primary interface for reading *digitial texts*. That’s what makes digital texts potentially different from printed ones, but whether reading on the screen is *fundamentally* different than reading a printed book seems to be a very open question, but at least one worth entertaining so we can have a sense of what might change if we move much of our reading to screens.

One thing I can tell from this case study, however, is that people read much less carefully on screens and they write much more impolitely.

Instead of reading filters of filtered information, you might try spending the time reading my printed book, Dreaming in Books, that asks us to return to the history of books to better understand why printed books have been so important. As I actually said in the article and as I do much more extensively in my book, I try to put the hype about e-books in perspective. It’s a shame this point continues to be missed.

Sincerely,
Andrew Piper

Alex Good appreciates the clarification, though some points remain murky and seem to involve some hair-splitting. Alex Good doesn’t understand this:

“Piper did not say that the page will no longer be the primary interface for reading, he said the page will no longer be the primary interface for reading *digital texts*.” When has the page ever been the primary interface for reading digital texts? Alex Good thinks he is missing something. Is Piper talking about the different ways we read, or about the nature of different kinds of text?

Alex Good doesn’t think speaking about oneself in the third person is a good idea (for anyone except Alex Good).