There is a particular book sitting on one of my bookshelves. Bound in a leathery type of material, its prose is a little flowery, vaguely puritanical, and it was printed in 1860. A little over 150 years ago.
The book? It is a biography of Benjamin Franklin.
What is a book?
A book is simply thoughts and words, in text and presented on a medium of some sort. In this case a fairly old medium.
Today?
Before doing some travel next weekend, I took a list of several books that I want to read and did some shopping. Just about all of them now are delivered digitally. Print versions needed to be ordered.
The Digital Medium
A book printed over 150 years ago can still be read today. Will a digital book published today be able to be read 150 years from now? Say about 2160?
After all, a they are still ideas and thoughts, expressed in text via a medium.
However, let us look mat the last 40 years of history when it comes to the audio / visual world.
45 RPM vinyl, 33 1/3 RPM vinyl, 8 Track, Cassette, DAT, Laserdisc, minidisc, betamax, VHS, CD, DVD – you name it.
And each one not compatible with its neighbour. If you purchased music or video in these formats, each new format forced you to either throw it out, or purchase it again in the new format. (assuming the content was ever reproduced in the newer formats) In other words, for historical information, possession of a method of playing the medium is more important than the content on the medium.
Will this be the same with books?
Will the formats and devices that display these formats today, bear any resemblance to the formats or devices common in 150 years?
Perhaps not.
I am sure that pieces of work society deems to be classical works will continue their ‘translation’ from format to format over the years. But I doubt it all will.
Perhaps in 150 years it will be more important to have the device to display or present the medium than the content on the medium itself.
McLuhan stated the medium is the message, so what is the result when the medium disappears? Is the message gone too?