You sit down with a classic piece of literature – nearly two hundred years old, but still being devoured and appreciated by modern readers. The tension builds, the plot thickens, page after page you form the characters in your head – maybe falling in love with a couple of them – until finally you are reaching the denouement. Pride and Prejudice is hotting up, literally hotting up, when all of a sudden, out of the blue, Austen’s batteries go dead.
Sound familiar? Not to me either, but by the insistence of technology companies and the apparent demand of consumers, this is set to be the future: a fusion of electronics and erudition that fits neatly in your hand. Book accessibility is understandably an issue for all students, regardless of their degree, so the introduction of various electronic reading devices (most notably the Sony Reader) is a progression that could be felt most deeply in academic arenas.
When it comes to books I tend towards Puritanism, but for once the issue seems problematic. As a student the potential benefits of such a device are obvious; if the system is set up to accommodate academic demands I could access all sorts of critical texts from my room without the worry of their absence from the library. It could greatly speed up and improve essay writing as well as compliment any seminar reading and instead of the boxes of wood pulp and ink that I dragged to university to adorn my shelves, I could have brought one silvery sleek box of plastic that has a library beyond my immediate financial means.
The product claims to emanate the act of reading to a point that is uncanny along with realistic page transitions and a backlight that won’t numb the mind after prolonged use. However, for me (and I know many literature orientated students feel the same) part of the wonder of words and storytelling is in the dog eared or crisp cover of a book. The leaves of yellowing pages, the grubby thumbprints of past readers whose eyes have roamed the same syntactical contours and decorated the page with thick underlining or probing annotations – all serve as emblems of another’s equal appreciation. When I get that rare opportunity to read for actual enjoyment, part of the pleasure is to be able to pick up a book that separates one from the computer, from technology and from the modern and instead is a level of escapism concerned with the specific attributes and world of the book. For me, having a couple of seconds delay on a page turn detracts from this and ends up disappointing the intention of the book.
Perhaps though, some will argue it is just the natural evolution of reading that mirrors the introduction of the printing press hundreds of years ago and as the system is refined and improved it will slowly become more viable for use until eventually we don’t know how we lived without it. Until that time comes though I am happy to leave the technology in the whirring box on my desk and take my chances with a paperback that won’t cost half of my student loan if I’m caught in the rain.