COMM 209, 390: How the world is changing ... part ___

Jacob Weisberg, chairman and editor-in-chief of the Slate Group, writes in the electronic magazine Slate.com that Amazon's handheld Kindle 2.0 "literature delivery system" is going to make books obsolete. Oh, great! Fine! Just what we needed to hear! "The Kindle 2 signals that after a happy, 550-year union, reading and printing are getting separated," Weisberg says. "It tells us that printed books, the most important artifacts of human civilization, are going to join newspapers and magazines on the road to obsolescence." He may just be right.

Weisberg says people have been putting books on paper since Johannes Gutenberg invented moveable-type printing in the 1450s, and the demise of ink-and-paper publishing is troubling. But he senses opportunity, too, for those who are adaptable enough to make the transition:

What we should worry about is that the [old] system supports the creation of literature, if grudgingly. There's a risk that what replaces it won't allow as many writers to make as good a living. But there's also a chance it could allow more writers to make a better living. For newspaper journalism, the future looks bleak at the moment. As the economic model for daily reporting collapses, we're losing the support structure for large-scale newsgathering. At the same time, the Internet has radically expanded the potential audience of every journalist while bringing a new freedom to experiment and innovate. When it comes to literature, I'm optimistic that electronic reading will bring more good than harm. New modes of communication will spur new forms while breathing life into old ones. Reading without paper might make literature more urgent and accessible than it was before the technological revolution, just like Gutenberg did.

Disclaimer: I first read this story in the print issue of Newsweek. I'd seen it on the Slate.com website, which I read daily, but just didn't want to read about a damn electronic "literature delivery system" till I could curl up with it in the magazine. But I'm afraid Weisberg is right. I hope he's right about the other part of it. And maybe, just maybe he is.