What will digital culture be in contrast with print culture and scribal culture? I cannot say, because we have not left print culture and we have barely begun to imagine and build digital culture, let alone understand the immensity of the task before us. “Everything that has been said about life in an online world has already been said about books,” Piper wrote; he was comparing current complaints about the internet making us “stupider, twitchier, addicted, and perhaps worst of all, bad spellers” against complaints that:
“Four hundred years ago in Spain people read too many romances (Don Quixote), three hundred years ago in London too many people wrote crap (Grub Street), two hundred years ago in Germany reading had turned into a madness (the so-called Lesewut), and one hundred years ago there was the telephone. We have worried that one day there would be more authors than readers (in 1788), that self-publishing would save, and then kill, reading (in 1773), and that no one would have time to read books anymore (in 1855).”
In the early 19th century, the German poet Christoph Martin Wieland asked, “If everyone writes, who will read?” More than two centuries later, contemplating blogging, The New York Times snarked: “Never have so many people written so much to be read by so few.”
I Was Wrong About the Death of the Book
The debate continues. I am on the fence but digital is likely to win by volume with paper a subset. Paper is great but takes space. If they can get screens easier to read and less hard on the eyes things may tilt to data. Time will tell.
Helen Lewis is a very good writer. I like her stuff.