Kindle killed the Book Club (Blog #3)

In the television sitcom “The Office” a group of homely looking drudges toils under their crazy -management and their paper producing, no-name company, “Dunder Mifflin”. Part of the irony of this show is that all the characters are essentially working in a doomed industry, that of paper making in an increasingly paperless world. At one point in the show Micheal Scott played by Steve Carell has a near breakdown when one of his younger contemporaries tells him that “In five years paper will be obsolete”. How then could paper or the invention of papyrus near 2680 AD (23) have made an impact on society and so readily declined to somewhat of a joke? Has the technology we have today made reading and writing in its paper form obsolete, or has it just made this technology more important? After all, our modern society was formed on the spread of ideas from Martin Luther’s writings and the printing press to Jane Austen’s volumes of romance novels.

Writing matter seems to stem from the types of things society finds laying around. For the Egyptians it seems that they had a high population of rushes with which to make papyrus, and they manufactured it right by the river where it grew (23). The Babylonians and Assyrians primarily used clay in which to write, which was commonly used as a medium for brick making and construction (26). Similarly the paper we have today is made of a combination of already recycled paper and tree products, things that are seemingly “laying around” (or at least comparatively due to our travel capabilities). Are we just moving towards a new media that is made of hardware we are just taking for granted? For example, when the I-phone first came out it was nearly $400, today it is priced around $200. A simple economic analysis of this would indicate that demand has gone down, but more that supply has jumped dramatically. This holds true for nearly all of our technology as it becomes more and more mundane and overlooked to us and becomes more and more disposable. The Egyptians had their overflow of reeds, the Babylonians of clay and we have a never ending supply of computer chips and wireless networks.

Perhaps paper is just one more writing instrument on the long line of media available for writing and we are simply ushering in new era of screen-writing rather that print or handwriting. Paper seems to be the modern-day equivalent of heavy and hard to carry clay tablets, and handheld devices and the computer as the more advanced papyrus of the ancient world. According to Howard Gardner in his article, “The End of Literacy? Don’t Stop Reading” he argues that, “In the past 150 years, each new medium of communication -- telegraph, telephone, movies, radio, television, the digital computer, the World Wide Web -- has introduced its own peculiar mix of written, spoken and graphic languages and evoked a chaotic chorus of criticism and celebration” (para 6). Papyrus was probably criticized in its day, the change from clay to a disposable and easily broken medium may have seemed absurd and risky, just as a move to computer generated literacy today may seem to be a great loss today.

To many the use of computer-generated literacy seems like cheating. That the media we have today is not like writing and is completely something else. But what would we tell the ancient Egyptians who still wanted to use clay tablets? We would most likely tell them that they are crazy to carry around those heavy things instead of the ever-knowing pocket iPhone or Blackberry. , “…At the start of the 21st century, there's a dizzying set of literacies available” says Gardner, “Few media are likely to disappear completely; rather, the idiosyncratic genius and peculiar limitations of each medium will become increasingly clear. Fewer people will write notes or letters by hand, but the elegant handwritten note to mark a special occasion will endure” (para 10). According to Gardner the use of our technology is not cheating or even undermining the beauty and intricacy of print, but rather moving to a media more suitable out environment. Is the Rosetta Stone any less amazing to us, are the Dead Sea Scrolls any less monumental? No, and they shouldn’t be they were the stepping stones that modern literacy is based on.

Similar to the Egyptians our phones, MacBooks, PC’s and other hardware all seem to require some sort of magic and produce magic information production out of nowhere. Similarly, the spread of papyrus started with this same concept. According to Harold Innis, “The use of papyrus rapidly increased after the expulsion or the Hyksos. The cult of Thoth had played an important role in the New Kingdom and in the expulsion of the Hyksos. Thoth became the god of magic. His epithets had great power and strength, and certain formulae were regarded as potent in the resistance to, or in the expulsion of, malicious spirits” (26). Just one walk into the Apple store in the mall can tell you that the Itouch is truly magic. There is a screen that constantly shows you how the thing works, it can look up, down around it can zoom in on tiny places on the Earth’s surface, it can read books it can create books, and it is powered by magic. Essentially, whoever knows how a technology is run, can hold and use its “magic” to their own benefit. In Egypt this was most likely the priests of Thor, and in America this role most likely belongs to Steve Jobs.

Where will paper be in the next few years? Will it give way to the ever changing role of literacy and become the like the clay tablet of the past? Perhaps the Dunder-Mifflin crew should apply at Google or Apple. Regardless of our technological audacity and brevity paper will still be viewed as a viable media for writing, After all, computers require batter space, Microsoft Word or some office tool and require an absurd amount of energy. Our society is simply in a shift from one medium to another, as with the Babylonians and Egyptians this could take many years. We haven’t figured out all the details to make our literacy completely computer-generated but likely society will follow that path. Will handwriting become increasingly obsolete? Most likely, but even with this change there will be creativity and literacy…literacy is not dead it has simply “re-spawned” into a new body.