Wednesday July 12, 2006

Future books, part 3

Indulge me while I flog the
networked books horse some more. I?ll warn you up front that this is a
relatively long post (were you expecting something short?). Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine a few months back had a lot to
say about the future social possibilities of the book, but was unnecessarily
critical of books as they now exist: http://www.buzzmachine.com/index.php/2006/05/19/the-book-is-dead-long-live-the-book/

Here's what he said:

The problems with books are many: They are frozen in time without the
means of being updated and corrected. They have no link to related
knowledge, debates, and sources. They create, at best, a one-way
relationship with a reader. They try to teach readers but don?t teach
authors. They tend to be too damned long because they have to be long
enough to be books. As David Weinberger taught me, they limit how
knowledge can be found because they have to sit on a shelf under one
address; there?s only way way to get to it. They are expensive to
produce. They depend on scarce shelf space. They depend on blockbuster
economics. They can?t afford to serve the real mass of niches. They are
subject to gatekeepers? whims. They aren?t searchable. They aren?t
linkable. They have no metadata. They carry no conversation. They are
thrown out when there?s no space for them anymore. Print is where words go to die.

Wow! No metadata huh? Aside from indices I guess. They carry no conversations? They have no link to related knowledge, debates, and sources? Aside from footnotes and credits I guess.

A good response to Jarvis came
from K. G. Schneider, whom I admire quite a lot:

?Print is where words go to
die?: that depends on the genre. A textbook you might be pressured into writing
for your fall class? That could be short-lived, or even (like the first
technology title I penned) DOA. But ?Pride and Prejudice? isn?t dead, and it
fully participates in a long conversation, continuing all the way to ?The Jane
Austen Book Club? and no doubt beyond.

It may well be that novels and
creative nonfiction move from dead trees to living bytes. Like many librarians,
I don?t have a container fetish, so that?s fine?maybe even better, what with
shelf space and old-growth forests and whatnot (though I do like writing in my
own books, and would expect an electronic book to be as easy to annotate).
Also, we in LibraryLand let David Weinberger think he invented this idea because
he?s such a nice guy, but we *already know* how frustrating it is?and how
limiting?that a book can only be in one physical location at a time. (I manage
a digital library where infinite points of access are part of the satisfying
experience.)

I also anticipate that new media
will birth new genres, some more participatory and interactive than others. I
adore recipes on Epicurious because food preparation is a great example of a
running conversation, and I find my own cookbooks far too silent as a result.

But sometimes?as with the
storyteller around the fire, or the children?s librarian with the hand puppets,
or a writer such as Jane Austen?we want the author to tell the tale. (Consider
how grimly awful most fanfic is.) Let each genre find its natural homes, as
future formats allow, and let new genres spring forth from the fertile fields
of human creativity. [emphasis mine].

I must say that I now find myself
mostly dismayed by Jarvis and Kelly. I want to keep an open mind to new
developments, but frankly their attitudes towards present day books and the
implications of dismissal that seem to be there for those of us who read books
turn me off so much.  When Jarvis says things
like: ?they create, at best, a one-way relationship with a reader,? ?They try
to teach readers but don?t teach authors,? and ?They tend to be too damned long
because they have to be long enough to be books.?, I just wonder what's he thinking? Here's what I thought about those three particular statements that Jarvis made.

So what exactly is wrong with a
one-way relationship with a reader? Last night I finished Virginia Woolfe?s The Years. What relationships should I exactly be expected to form here? This
wonderful novel is a nuanced and beautifully written exploration of what
constitutes memory and family life set in a particular time and milieu. I am
forming an ongoing relationship with it based on my own thoughts, past experiences,
and readings of other Woolfe works. What is it that I am missing? In the
networked book future, I suppose I would be chopping out segments of the novel
and perhaps ?doing? something with them.

But I already am, just not
digitally. And there?s the crux for Kelly and Jarvis and company. If it isn?t
done digitally, they seem to become really, really upset to the point of being
petulant. I?m thinking and having emotional reactions to what I?m reading and
the online remixing, sharing, and annotating that are so highly touted as the
added value that will become normative parts of books of this envisioned future
seems to me to offer a paltry return compared to whatever thoughts and feelings
plain print books can already engender within me. I?d rather actually read or
view than annotate and compare lists. Maybe these bonus activities will be more
applicable to professional reading and reading for work where segments may
matter more than a whole continuous and contiguous work, but there?s a lot of
reading going on for just pleasure too where a self-contained narrative is just
fine, thank you.

As for the second point about
teaching the author, Virginia Woolfe is dead. What am I supposed to teach her?
If she were alive, would I need to interact with her to have a relationship
with her work? I?ve heard several authors talk and frankly often find my
interaction with them via the page to be far richer than whatever supposed
interactions people like Kevin Kelly insist that I must soon have.

Were I a fiction author, I?m not
at all sure I would want to be in constant dialog with readers who supposedly have
something to teach me ('Hey Dan Brown, listen up, you are a really lousy writer.'). Not
because I?m necessarily better or smarter than they are, but I simply don?t
have the time or desire to be in constant revision, discussion,or explanation. Sometimes
works should just stand as they are. Updike says this pretty well in his
editorial and I think he?s right on the mark there.

Experiments like Mackenzie Work?s
GAM3R 7H30RY which are all about participation are fine (though frankly that
effort appears to me to be more like a pimped-out wiki with an open-post blog
attached to it than a book), but I doubt most authors want that much ongoing
revision. If they do, then networked books will be their medium. However,
participation and feedback already occur. Most books are edited, many books
have acknowledgments to friends and colleagues who parsed some part of the
draft. Just how wide and open does the circle of participation have to be? Maybe there's room for different standards?

As for his comment that books are
too long, that says more to me about Jeff Jarvis than it does about books. His
brave new world seems to reward those who do not want to (or can?t) consume
longer works, but want to work with short segments and remix or tag or do
things to them other than just reading and thinking about them. That?s ok, go
at it, but it seems bizarre to say that books are just too plain long, period.
You?ll get me to take you somewhat seriously by not issuing blanket edicts like
that. I usually associate that attitude with reviews of classics in Amazon written
by self-righteously outraged high school students frustrated at having to read
anything longer and more sophisticated than the latest text message they?ve
received.

It?s neat that there are people
who want to and like to remix and annotate and create new types of expression via
social interactions with text. Some incredible things will likely be done
someday and I applaud those who will bring their creativity to bear. It?s just
that  many of
us, I?m guessing, are still content to read as we presently do. It works - really well.