The Replacement for Books

Is there a replacement for books?

Google seems to think so.

The Economist has a handle on this issue. Go here for the article.

For those unknowing:

IN SECRET locations and using secret methods, human beings are scanning lots and lots of books for Google, the world's largest web-search company. That humans are involved is beyond doubt (fingers are visible in the corners of many pages on books.google.com) although this is uncharacteristic of Google, which has a fetish for purist technology.

Google will not divulge exact numbers, but Daniel Clancy, the project's lead engineer, gives enough guidance for an educated guess: Google's contract with one university library, Berkeley's, stipulates that it must digitise 3,000 books a day. The minimum for the other 12 universities involved may be lower, but the rate for participating publishers is higher. So a conservative estimate has Google digitising at least 10m books a year. The total number of titles in existence is estimated to be about 65m.

The author of the article makes several points but adds:

Most stories, however, will never find a better medium than the paper-bound novel. That is because readers immersed in a storyline want above all not to be interrupted, and all online media teem with distractions (even a hyperlink is an interruption). People do not read fiction in order to accomplish a specific task in a limited amount of time, as they read reference and schoolbooks. Random-access dictionaries and cookbooks may be useful; random-access novels less so.

I submit there are two clear and unequivocal categories of reading:

• Research/business
• Pleasure

Digital books will never, ever, replace pleasure reading.

There is nothing, nothing quite so satisfying as holding an actual book in one's hands. That feeling will never, ever be replaced by something as intangible as a mere faux collection of 1s and 0s.

Period.

BZ