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Originally Posted by Nerwen
I didn't say it doesn't influence content, I said content is more important– "especially when we're dealing with text in each case". The difference between oral and written language is much greater. I don't think it matters that much whether text is written/displayed on paper or on a screen. Recall that the claim is that novels as we know them will cease to exist:
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One page of screen/paper or 1,137? What matters is the willingness of readers to scroll down
alot and the ability to hold two pages (or more) of text in their hands for comparison at the same time. Reading a novel is not necessarily a sequential activity.
Novels aren't sacrosanct and they aren't the only form of narrative. They came into this world under conditions relevant to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They may well leave this world when conditions change adequately to make them no longer meaningful/relevant/important/pleasurable/significant.
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It is of course, hard to predict how technology will develop– I mean, if at some point in the futire everything goes holographic, or is beamed directly into our brains, or [insert sci-fi scenario here], now that would make a difference.
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Reading is not a passive activity. Ask any teacher if she or he thinks they can merely pour education into pupils' heads.
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Originally Posted by Morthoron
This talk of the book's demise is silly. Books are indispensible as door stops, for propping up uneven tables. holding down piles of papers and for filling empty bookcases. I have heard that some folks even read books!
Books: the duct tape of the literary world.
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Very apt analogy, but I think you left out one other essential function of books: collectors of dust, yeah, even more successful than Swiffer products.
