In our fast-paced age of digital technology, the good old paper book seems almost a vintage item. At first glance, a handheld electronic tablet with a thousand masterpieces of world literature outperforms a bulky bookcase containing a hundred or two volumes. But the question is worth taking a closer look at it.
Carrier Evolution
It should start with the fact that people began to record information for posterity a long time ago, and this process was constantly improved. From cave paintings, figures of bone and clay - to clay tablets and writing. Then scrolls, inscriptions carved into stones, fabric with text, first parchment, paper, punch cards and magnetic tape, diskette, disk, usb drive, cloud storage
.Moreover, the last four types of storage media appeared in less than thirty years!
And meanwhile, “rock art” in the stone jungle we still see. We carve inscriptions in stone, create plates with information. Yes, the transmitted information has changed - the commemorative plaque on the hero’s house is different from the clay plaque with the code of laws of the ancient tribe - but the principle has been preserved. In exactly the same way, the function of the book as the most accessible, convenient and widespread format for storing information gradually disappears - and inevitably will disappear. Digital media has the flexibility, mobility, ease of organization. But the book itself will not disappear anywhere: it will have other functions.
About Reader
An important nuance that is forgotten in disputes about the preservation of the book is the reader himself. Pay attention to libraries: in large cities, where the size of the fund and the number of readers are sufficient, separate children's libraries, scientific, public, and libraries for the blind are created separately. This suggests that different readers need fundamentally different literature.
Try to compare the translator, who chooses the electronic dictionary, because it is really more convenient for work, and the child-school student who has to choose between the voluminous, colored paper edition of Robinson Crusoe - with glossy illustrations, movable inserts, with the delicious smell of real paper - and an electronic reader in which you can’t make out the pictures, do not touch the cover.
Technical literature requires a convenient format, ease of access, a book search engine - everything that is sold on digital media is an order of magnitude better than in a paper book. But fiction is always an impression, an atmosphere, an almost mental contact between a book and a reader.
