The exacting silence of a book

I’m tempted by the Kindle – but the more they become interactive and linked, the more they multitask and offer a hundred different functions, the less they will be able to preserve the aspects of the book that we actually need. An e-book reader that does a lot will not, in the end, be a book. The object needs to remain dull so the words – offering you the most electric sensation of all: insight into another person’s internal life – can sing.”

While I agree that Amazon is, in the long run, bad for publishing, and that digital forms of entertainment train our brains to respond to ever faster forms of stimulation, reducing our attention spans and making it harder and harder for us to re-enter, in Walter Benjamin’s phrase, the exacting silence of a book, I have other concerns.

ALEX GOOD, The Digital Apocalypse. Canadian Notes & Queries

see also: Why Selling E-books at 99 Cents Destroys Minds
The Dumbest Generation
The Shallows
You Are Not a Gadget
Diary
Dark Age Ahead

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