Pixelated Brains and New Media

The Future is an Empty Room

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[29 May 2009]

By Michael Antman

Feel Like Committing Cultural Suicide?  We Have an App for That.

In the wake of every loud new product announcement, there is little left but an echoing silence, even as the successive waves of these new devices are burying parts of our cultural heritage alive.

Unfortunately, these issues are exceedingly difficult to talk about in a public forum, thanks to “the Watson Effect”.  Many years ago, the chairman of IBM, Thomas Watson, infamously opined that “there is a world market for maybe five computers.”  As spectacularly wrong predictions go, you couldn’t do much better than that. And ever since, people have been terrified, when talking about technology, of appearing similarly foolish to future generations – even though the sum total of foolishness is probably equally divided between the advocates (yes, there really were once websites that sold you only socks, or pet food, online) and the skeptics. 

But there’s a huge, and perhaps understandable, difference between the two groups.  The advocates, as they must, speak up, or what’s the point of being an advocate?  A visionary without a voice is nothing at all.  But the skeptics, though they also must speak, too often do not.  Thus, in the wake of every loud new product announcement, there is little left but an echoing silence, even as the successive waves of these new devices are burying parts of our cultural heritage alive.

Another part of what makes it so hard to speak up in defense of print media is that digitization has all the bases covered. In the case of newspapers, for example, it’s easy to see that “the market has spoken” because advertisers are indeed pulling out of print so definitively in favor of less-expensive and more-targeted advertising on the Internet, and because enterprises such as Google and Yahoo have been so phenomenally successful, even as century-old print franchises slide into insolvency. 

But the same time, digital media is able to adopt the stance of the rebel, employing creative guerilla tactics against the monolithic and arrogant “mainstream media.”  (The fact that the mainstream media has indeed been arrogant doesn’t help a bit, and it’s also true that the majority of online publications have to scramble to collect enough ad revenue to pay the bills.)  It’s a neat trick: Digital media entrepreneurs somehow have become the fat and happy capitalists and the rebels with the weird sideburns all at once.

Add to this the fact that some who question certain aspects of digitization’s relentless advance are likely to be branded, unthinkingly, as a Luddite (not that there aren’t some actual Luddites out there) and it’s a wonder that anyone says anything at all.

Lately, even as lovers of the traditional book bury their noses in the latest volume while the world shifts around them, the proponents of new technology have been bellowing more loudly than ever. It reminds me, a bit, of those scenes in old black and white movies where an excitable farmer is seen shouting into his wall-mounted crank telephone. Why is he shouting? Because he thinks he has to “help” his voice go those long distances to that farm on the other side of the county.

Up until a year or two ago, everyone seemed to be shouting into their cell phones as well, until they realized, almost all at the same time, that the person at the other end of the line can hear you just as well when you murmur, or speak in a normal tone of voice. There are far fewer arguments on our commuter trains these days as a result.

Digitization is still, I suspect, in the shouting stage, that point where people are infatuated and intimidated by the newness of the technology without really understanding its long-term effect on our society and culture, nor how impactful it can be at normal volumes.

What do I consider to be a “normal volume”?  I consider it to be a cultural conversation in which print and digital both participate, and in which the value of each is readily acknowledged, even as the shortcomings of each are frankly discussed. 

It means embracing digitization for its manifold wonders and miracles, while gently pointing out that it can contribute in some cases to a culture that is ersatz, freeze-dried, over-engineered, deracinated, overly perfected, and cloned.

It means using your e-reader for perusing, say, business books and heavy textbooks and frequently updated technical journals. It means taking it along on lengthy trips, and using it in low-light conditions. Actually, it means using it for whatever the hell you want to use it for – as long as you continue to keep in mind what it is that makes books so wonderful to hold and to read, and distribute your dollars accordingly.

Flannery O’Connor? There’s a sleek and beautiful Library of America edition for her. Saul Bellow looks best in an Everyman’s Library edition—you know, the ones with the cool satin bookmarks. Elmore Leonard? He’s perfect in a real, live paperback. That oversized book of Matisse cut-outs? It just ain’t the same on the pages of an e-book.

Ideally, it shouldn’t be difficult at all for the digital and paper worlds to co-exist. Consider, for example, what the publisher of my first novel ENC Press, is doing (Cherry Whip , 2004).  ENC is employing all of the resources of the online world to build its nascent business – Twitter, discussion boards, online-only ordering that bypasses the sclerotic old distribution systems, Facebook fan pages – but, at the end of the day, delivering an actual, tangible, three-dimensional book to your actual, tangible front door.

So can print and digital indeed co-exist? Honestly, though the odds are against it happening, I think it is in the interests of our civilization to give it a try.

To say, finally, “the book stops here.” 

In a recent episode of House, a middle-aged-man and his daughter are diagnosed by the irascible Doctor House with anhedonia, or the inability to experience pleasure, after he notes that their house is empty of decorations and books.

I thought that diagnosis was spot on. I consider the clutter created by books and records and magazines and newspapers – but books in particular – as being very much in the same category as the clutter created by children, pets, plants, food, photographs, and art, which is to say:  Not clutter at all, but signs of pleasure and happiness and life.

Or, as Robert Louis Stevenson put it, in a verse I remember vividly from my childhood, “The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.” 

I encountered this little poem in a hardcover book, originally published before my birth, titled Poems of Early Childhood, as part of a series called Childcraft. All of the volumes in the series had bright, bumpy orange covers with engraved illustrations, and, in our family at least, yellowing pages with purplish jelly stains. My parents read these wonderful books to me, and I had the good sense to rescue some of them from my childhood home, so that now I read the same poems to my own daughter.

I expect her to save these books for her children, too, even if they need to be re-stitched and re-bound. The prospect that she might, instead, choose to read to them from a smooth screen, in a barren room without bookshelves or board games, is deeply saddening. 

But there’s no reason why this prospect should ever come to pass. At the level of individual choice, I hope and perhaps unreasonably suspect that we will not in effect go backwards by uncritically and unfailingly choosing the two-dimensional over the three-dimensional every time and for every purpose. Let us, instead, be capable of acknowledging technology for both its benefits and its failings, while continuing to wholeheartedly embrace a part of our culture that has brought light and delight into our lives for the past 500 years – the printed book.

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Pixelated Brains and New Media

Michael Antman writes on books, movies, the visual arts, and marketing.  He is the author of the novel Cherry Whip (ENC Press) and the recently completed memoir Searching for the Seagull Motel, which is about door-to-door Bible salesmen, sailors, strippers, bar brawls, beached whales, hermits, hurricanes, larcenous preachers, the pirate Jean Lafitte, and an administrative assistant to a pimp.

His website, where most of his writing is collected, is at Michael Antman Author.com and he also blogs frequently at When Falls the Coliseum.com.

Comments

I strongly take offense at your comparison of Star Trek to a piece of moldy cheese!  And there are well-regarded books documenting just how much Star Trek did get right about the future.  But the rest of your piece was spot on - really made me think.  I must say, though, that I actually like minimalism and often fantasized having a bedroom or room like those Next Generation crew quarters!  They have plenty of artwork and artifacts.  And Data even had his cat, Spot, in his room!  I say: Down with space (and Earth) clutter!  However, I admit it would be weird to someday, as you write, have no bookstores, no newspaper stands, etc. - and digital libraries?? Bravo on a great article - one I discovered while reading PopMatters on my Kindle!

Comment by Jen from New York City — May 29, 2009 @ 9:56 pm

Amen. They can have my books when they pry them out of my cold, dead fingers.

Comment by Kelly — May 30, 2009 @ 11:42 am

Just because books and other media won’t exist in physical form in the future doesn’t make them any less valuable. You’re lamenting the fact that in the future we’ll have less clutter and less stuff? I see this as a great benefit. I hate having to dedicate giant shelves to media I only really access every once in a while. I value my books and movie and games collection as much as anyone else, but the human need to collect STUFF is sickening. Our loss of the want to hoard material objects is not something to lament, it’s something to celebrate. More people have access to more information now, and the people have been empowered to create in ways we’ve never even dreamed of. Now, instead of there being a class of creatives, we can all experience what it is like to create.

Comment by Christopher Furniss — May 30, 2009 @ 2:01 pm

Dear Christopher:

I might agree with you if the stuff in question were merely status objects or ephemera, but I consider books, in particular, to be in a special category that’s very different from what we think of as “material goods” (I think most people look at it this way, too; we tend not to call someone with huge numbers of books “materialistic,” though we might call them other things.) 

No question that some people like less clutter and some people like more, but I think there’s a larger issue here, which is that the ready access to enormous amounts of information tends to commoditize that information without, on the other hand, making it more likely that people will discover wonderful new artists.  Sure, there’s some of that, but the opposite is also the case: As our bookstores and record stores disappear, it will become more and more the case that people will gravitate to fewer and fewer heavily promoted “brand names.” 

Sure, there’ll be a million interesting artists out there, but my suspicion is that it’ll be less likely, rather than more likely, that significant numbers of people will find them.  Have you seen, for example, the stats on how few songs and albums constitute nearly all of ITunes’s sales?  The vast majority of songs and albums didn’t sell a single copy over the course of a year.  The same applies to books.

And yes, I do consider the loss of common meeting places where we can browse and meet other people face to face a tremendous loss to our culture.


Best,

Michael

Comment by Michael Antman — May 30, 2009 @ 2:53 pm

I disagree wholeheartedly with your analysis of our cultural trajectory. 

Speaking as a young person, I’ve noticed when people look back on the art of their generation as superior or more ‘soulful’ as the current art, they’re only selectively remembering their nostalgia.

Going back to your Star Trek analogy, Star Trek did get a lot of things wrong.  But Deep Space Nine got right a lot about human nature that the Gene Roddenberry variations missed.  It’s parting words, ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same’.  We’re never going to replace alcohol with ‘synthehol’, which tastes the same but isn’t intoxicating, nor are we going to abolish money and ‘rise above’ our human desires.  People are always going to find ways to be people, and whether they’re doing it with ink on paper or digital bits, they’re always going to want flavor in their life.  They’re just probably going to get it in ways you’re not used to and you don’t consider equal to the ways you get it in your life.

In fact, one would argue having books and LPs instead of oral tradition, telephone instead of written letters, etc constitutes the destruction of the soul.  If one was born a few centuries ago, yet you find LPs and books to be sufficiently soulful.

Technologically phasing out what you consider to be special does not constitute forfeiture of the soul.

Comment by Chris — June 1, 2009 @ 3:24 pm

Hi Chris—

I, on the other hand, don’t disagree wholeheartedly with you; I think you raise some legitimate points. 

However, the oral tradition co-existed with books and LPs and it still does, though perhaps not to the same degree as before. We can still hear live music despite the ubiquity of recorded music, for example.  But there’s something perhaps unique in human history about digitization in its absolutism and its inability to compromise or co-exist with earlier technologies; it doesn’t allow competing media to survive (not because of any malign intent, of course; it’s just the nature of digitization to reduce every storage and display medium to its least tangible manifestation.) 

Thus, while live music continues to thrive, it’s extremely unlikely that CDs and DVDs will exist at all as commercially viable entities ten years from today.

I can probably live with this, as, I would guess, can you.  But every situation has to be evaluated individually, on its own merits, and DVDs, CDs and LPs are, in my opinion, in a far-different, and far-lesser, category from books.

Indeed, the primary purpose of this article is to present books as a special case worthy of our special attention. I understand your point about generational differences, but that can’t stop me, nor should it stop you, from focusing on the obvious: that the printed book is in jeopardy of dying, that the screen is a sterile substitute, and yes, that losing the printed book as a vital cultural artifact would be a tragedy, and would, to borrow your phrase, constitute forefeiture of at least part of our soul.  The empty rooms, bookshelves, and bookstores in our future will be merely visual analogues for a greater cultural, aesthetic and spiritual loss.

Comment by Michael Antman — June 1, 2009 @ 5:04 pm

It seems to me that your defense of books is like arguing that music written 200 years ago has suffered because it is played on a modern Steinway instead of the intended medium, the Klavier or Pianoforte. Or that you’d prefer the original 1939 Wizard of Oz to its current digitally restored, recolored and remastered version? Don’t you think it likely devices will evolve that improve the experience of reading beyond books in ways similar to these examples?

Most of the technology of Star Trek is a stretch too far, but I wouldn’t be so sure about the Holodeck. I think even you might put your book aside for a chance at that.

Certainly, as McLuhan stated, the medium influences how we perceive the message, and some mediums are more pleasingly tactile, sensuous, evocative, etc., than are others. But ultimately, what’s important is the message: that Hamlet exists somewhere. I don’t really care where these important, beautiful messages reside, as long they don’t rot, burn or turn to dust as books are wont to do.

Comment by Mark Guerin — June 3, 2009 @ 2:40 pm

Mark—

A rather bizarre comment, all in all.  In the first place, knowing, as I do, that you’ve read my piece in its entirety, it should have been very clear to you that I’m merely advocating the not-unreasonable proposition that books co-exist with eReaders in the future; that I’ll be buying an eReader myself one of these days; and that both printed and electronic technologies have their advantages and their disadvantages. I “put my book aside” all the time, and in fact probably spend more time engaging with social media and new technologies than the vast majority of people.

Second, every situation has to be judged on its own merits.  Your use, as an example, of remastered and restored movies (which, of course, I prefer, as long as the remastering is faithful to the intent of the original) is too far off-topic to be worth responding to.

The purpose of the article—again, you should know this—was to point out that digitization tends to have an all-or-nothing quality about it, and that, for all of their manifest advantages, I wouldn’t want digital technologies to entirely wipe out our 500-year-old heritage of printed books. 

Would you?

You also contradict yourself: In your first paragraph, you claim that new devices will “improve the experience of reading” (in some cases, maybe yes, in some cases, no) but then you say that “ultimately, what’s important is the message: that Hamlet exists somewhere.”  I think you need a few extra paragraphs of close reasoning to connect those two thoughts.

Finally, as a one-time contributor to the message boards of an organization called The Dead Media Project, I’m very aware, as you should be, that many of the “important, beautiful messages” you speak of have been lost over the decades not because they were in books (though that happens too, of course), but because they were stored on fleetingly modern technologies that very quickly became outmoded—we’ve lost vast amounts of information that were stored on old punch cards, reel-to-reels, unreadable or corrupted floppy discs, etc., because we no longer can “read” them.  In order to rescue this information, engineers have been forced to—you guessed it—print it out.  Of course, much of this information was present in books to begin with, with no need for machines to read it or interpret it.

I’m not suggesting that the same will happen with data now on the Internet, but I think your overall argument is facile and reflexive.  It certainly doesn’t engage with my actual arguments, which go far beyond the cartoonish “books are good/technology is bad” paradigm you seem to have taken away from it. 

I think Kindles and Sony eReaders, etc., are very nice pieces of technology (as, again, I state very clearly in my article), but you seem to have trouble “returning the compliment”—your contemptuous reference to books that “rot, burn or turn to dust” is beneath you.

Comment by Michael Antman — June 3, 2009 @ 6:45 pm

I was not commenting on the quality of your essay, which I still agree is well reasoned and excellently written, and perhaps I was unclear in my argument. I would not criticize your feelings about books, any more than I would critize anyone for mourning the loss of a loved one.

The point I was trying to make is that cultures are always evolving past earlier technologies and, as a culture, rarely regret doing so.

Right now, digitization is causing us to undergo a massive paradigm shift, complete with the chaos and shakeups that typically accompany those shifts. Your essay powerfully describes the downside of this transition. Digitization is no where near perfect right now and that is demonstrated, as you point out, by the fact that valueable writings have been lost due to unstable storage technologies. 

Why do art technologies change?  Because artists are always searching for ways to get closer to truth and beauty and better ways to preserve their creations.

Why do we love museums?  Not because we regret the loss of the technologies artists used to create great paintings, prints, books, sculptures, tapestries, furniture, etc., but because because of the objects themselves.  But nobody regrets that we no longer use the materials Rembrandt painted with, the instruments Bach composed on, and or the press that printed the Gutenberg bible.  Beautiful things (e.g., messages found in books) will always be beautiful independent of the technologies used to create them.  The technologies die; the beauty of what was created by the technologies survives if people love it enough to preserve it. 

I’m saddened, to a degree less so than you, that some books will disappear. Those beautiful as objects in and of themselves should and probably will be preserved in museums.

I’m more concerned that the beauty of their messages survive.

To your point that I don’t connect this thought to the idea that better reading technologies will evolve, here’s an example: I rarely if ever ‘read’ books at all anymore.  I listen to them.  My experience is different from yours, yes, but only in a relative sense, not in a quantifiable one. Am I getting less or more out of listening to a book that you read? Some narrators are terrific at bringing meanings out of words and phrases I, as a reader, might never have considered. 

The book evolved to replace the storyteller.  Did it lose anything in doing so?  Absolutely.  The non-verbal cues, the acting out of scenes, the intonation and use of different voices. 

Every technology/technique/method of delivering a message has its own intrinsic qualities that are lost when that technology is lost. But, as a culture, we seldom regret it because the newer technology often provides some advantage (ala natural selection)over the previous ones. Books are more permanent than storytelling.  Digitization is more permanent, takes up less space and can be more convenient than books. Digital audio books revive the beauty of storytelling while providing the benefits of digitization. 

Who knows what will replace digitization and why.  We just know it will happen and it will happen for the better.

Comment by Mark Guerin — June 4, 2009 @ 8:52 am

Mark,

A more accurate analogy for Bach and the piano would be Switched On Bach and the moog keyboard. The piano is certainly a technological improvement on the harpsichord, and, in the proper hands, like Glenn Gould’s, actually managed to improve on Bach as he was originally performed. But, it didn’t stop there, and you won’t convince me that electronic Bach isn’t a huge step backward. The message, all those notes, is still there, but something fine and serious and lovely was lost in what Wendy Carlos did.

Also, you can’t have it both ways with McLuhan; if the medium is important to the message, then you can’t say that the message alone is enough. Reading Hamlet is nowhere near the experience that the staged Hamlet is of the written Hamlet.

Finally, that all technological advancements “happen for the better” is simply not the case. An Mp3 isn’t better than a .wav file; it’s simply more portable. In fact, it’s demonstrably worse. Digitalization may make things more convenient, but it doesn’t make them better.

Comment by Christopher Guerin — June 4, 2009 @ 9:51 am

Thank you, a fascinating essay, and I agree with most of the points raised - though I have to say I don’t like most of them. 

I’m just wondering - to go on from the jelly spattered book you mentioned - that in a world of digitisation where everything is the same and blandly perfect, we might have a change in values.  Maybe we will turn to books because they are not perfect.  There is something comforting about a misprint or the wrong note that occurs on any printed page and in any recording, which will probably disappear as things become digital.  I suppose they remind us that the artists, like us. are human. 

Maybe the world will turn towards that as if turns towards unique clothes and furnishings.  They will seek out items like books and music that belong uniqely to them.

Comment by Clare D from UK — June 9, 2009 @ 10:31 am

You�re lamenting the fact that in the future we�ll have less clutter and less stuff? I see this as a great benefit. I hate having to dedicate giant shelves to media I only really access every once in a while. I value my books and movie and games collection as much as anyone else, but the human need to collect STUFF is sickening. Our loss of the want to hoard material objects is not something to lament, it�s something to celebrate. More people have access to more information now, and the people have been empowered to create in ways we�ve never even dreamed of. Now, instead of there being a class of creatives, we can all experience what it is like to create.

Comment by Leather Sofa — June 11, 2009 @ 3:57 pm

I believe you already made this comment above under the name Christopher Furniss. Michael duly responded, and the only thing I would add is that, just because digital books, albums, etc. don’t take up physical space, doesn’t mean that they’re somehow liberated from the crass world of consumerism. In other words, your room can look like the minimalist personal quarters on the Enterprise and still be full of junk.

Comment by K. Roberts — June 11, 2009 @ 5:08 pm

Dear Clare D:

Thank you for your comment.  What you said about the appeal of imperfection reminded me of a quote I came across in the process of researching this article.  It’s from the contemporary painter John Currin who said of his own work, in a recent New Yorker profile, that “it’s great when the accidental becomes indistinguishable from the intentional.  That’s when it begins to seem like a living thing.” 

Cheers,

Michael

Comment by Michael Antman — June 11, 2009 @ 5:31 pm

The problem with the essay is the premise is a false dichotomy - books vs digital - the reality, even today, is the two mediums are interchangeable and have complex relationships. For example Google Books has scanned 5+ million public domain books freely available as PDF’s which can be downloaded, then re-uploaded to LuLu, and re-printed as a book again (all for about $15-20). This sort of hazy merging of air and sea will be more pronounced in the future as publishers make dual digital/paper versions available.

Instead of comparing to music, a better comparison is office paper - whatever happened to the “paperless office”? Turned out to be a bad idea. Printed documents have advantages.

Comment by Stephen Balbach — July 19, 2009 @ 8:04 pm

— PopMatters sponsor —

I think that dual digital/paper versions of books is, as you note, a likely next step.  However, the step after that—or maybe the step after the step after that—is likely digital only.  Or perhaps books will survive only as either one-off customized PODs or as rare keepsakes.  I hope I’m wrong.

I agree that the “paperless office” isn’t happening any time soon (I actually never thought it was likely, for the same reason you do—printed documents have advantages.)  But our offices are a very different environment than our cultural “spaces,” whether in our homes or on our streets.

In fact, the various comparisons and analogies on this message board and others (including comparisons and analogies I myself have made), whether to musical instruments or the paperless office or various other things, are, while sometimes illuminating, ultimately only of limited value. 

Leaving all metaphors aside, I can step out of my office and take a half-hour walk and see a shuttered store where there once was an enormous Virgin Records (and books, and DVDs, and magazine) store; and a shuttered store where there once was another large and very busy record store called Rock Records; three shuttered independent bookstores; and a shuttered Rand-McNally map store that sold travel guides; and on, and on.  Not one of them has been replaced by new record/book/DVD/magazine stores, but rather by bank branches and Payday Loan stores and Subway sandwich shops and the like.  This is no metaphor or analogy; this is facts on the ground. 

Of course I realize that this cultural devastation (as I see it) has been created by many factors, including the stupidity and greed of record-industry executives, our discount culture, and of course our current recession.  But digitization (which, by the way, in every way aids and abets our discount culture) clearly is playing a very significant role in this. 

Some independent bookstores, and a small handful of specialized record stores, are still thriving, true, but I think only temporarily.  Some people may find all this perfectly fine or even vastly appealing; but for those who, like me, don’t want to see the physical manifestations of our culture entirely disappear behind a single cool screen, I think we need to recognize that digitization is, by its very nature, a uniquely uncompromising and perhaps irreversible force.  I don’t think that many people would argue that this isn’t the case with music. 

I love my various “screens” and hope they can co-exist with books, in particular, forever.  I fear, though, that this isn’t going to be the case, at least not for very much longer.

Comment by Michael Antman — July 20, 2009 @ 7:27 pm

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