the way it ustabe
Dec. 17th, 2007 07:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacHere's an interesting article on cultural resistance to e-book readers. Jonathan Franzen is particularly vehement: "Literature isn't data. The difference between Shakespeare on a BlackBerry and Shakespeare in the Arden Edition is like the difference between vows taken in a shoe store and vows taken in a cathedral."
And neither, I should add, is like hearing Shakespeare performed by actors in a theatre, which as far as I'm concerned is the only way to experience Shakespeare. (Though Shakespeare is one of my favorite authors, I have almost never sat down and read a Shakespeare play from end to end.)
So the reading - or listening - experience really matters, and sometimes not even in a way you'd guess. It took me years to figure out that the double columns that F&SF used to print its fiction in was making it read choppily. (Maybe that's why they stopped doing it.) Which is why, though I don't fetishize the book, I remain skeptical of the e-book reading experience, despite the efforts of the electronic equivalent of the "Why go to Italy when there's Pizza Hut?" crowd to argue that it'll be just as good, Real Soon Now.
There are other examples of the "Other people can do what they want, but I want it this way" principle.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kateyule wants to keep her CDs, even though the files are on computer, even if (she doesn't raise this issue) the sound quality is the same (it can be, but in practice, for file-size reasons, it usually isn't). I would grieve at giving up my CDs too; in a computer my music files would be chaos. I know because my document files are.
I just received an invitation from the Registrar of Voters to become a "permanent absentee" and vote by mail. I don't want to vote by mail. I want to go to a polling place and vote there. I don't want to have to fill out my ballot before election day, and I don't want to worry about whether it'll get delivered. (I could take it to a polling place on the day, but then why not just vote then and there?)
And neither, I should add, is like hearing Shakespeare performed by actors in a theatre, which as far as I'm concerned is the only way to experience Shakespeare. (Though Shakespeare is one of my favorite authors, I have almost never sat down and read a Shakespeare play from end to end.)
So the reading - or listening - experience really matters, and sometimes not even in a way you'd guess. It took me years to figure out that the double columns that F&SF used to print its fiction in was making it read choppily. (Maybe that's why they stopped doing it.) Which is why, though I don't fetishize the book, I remain skeptical of the e-book reading experience, despite the efforts of the electronic equivalent of the "Why go to Italy when there's Pizza Hut?" crowd to argue that it'll be just as good, Real Soon Now.
There are other examples of the "Other people can do what they want, but I want it this way" principle.
kateyule wants to keep her CDs, even though the files are on computer, even if (she doesn't raise this issue) the sound quality is the same (it can be, but in practice, for file-size reasons, it usually isn't). I would grieve at giving up my CDs too; in a computer my music files would be chaos. I know because my document files are.I just received an invitation from the Registrar of Voters to become a "permanent absentee" and vote by mail. I don't want to vote by mail. I want to go to a polling place and vote there. I don't want to have to fill out my ballot before election day, and I don't want to worry about whether it'll get delivered. (I could take it to a polling place on the day, but then why not just vote then and there?)
