Goodbye Books, Hello Digital Texts: Is the Internet the Modern Printing Press Revolution?

In 1450, Johannes Gutenberg created the first printing press. This tool led to an incredible revolution: books had previously been available only to the educated scholars and scribes in monasteries. The printing press, however, made it possible for books to be made quickly and in larger quantities, allowing for the mass spread of knowledge and information among the general public. Humanity blossomed as books trickled down through the people and spread across the world. This was the beginning of the ability for any literate person to develop a relationship with books and glean a more complete understanding of the world. This spread of books connected the world in new ways; people across the globe could develop and grow with the knowledge they found in books that had been brought by traders from far-off lands. The printing press allowed for the widespread availability of books, and a deep relationship was forged between books and their readers.

            I always had a deep relationship with books. During my childhood years, almost every piece of knowledge or tidbit of information I got was from books. My family was the proud owner of the entire set of Encyclopedia Britannica. The bookshelves was crammed full of these volumes, and they smelled musty and old, sweet and papery, just the way that good books are supposed smell. We always had one volume out on a pedestal in the hallway; that showed that we were “intellectual” people and had access to volume upon volume of invaluable knowledge. That was rather pretentious; the books, however, made me feel worldly and well informed. I would stand on tiptoe and flip through the pages, reading entry after entry for hours. 

           

             If I wanted to know anything, I looked it up in a book. If it wasn’t in a book I had in my possession, I traipsed down to the local library and looked it up there. If the book wasn’t there, I did not have access to the information. That was simply the way it was. Now, there has been another massive spread-of-information revolution: this is the digitalization and availability of any piece of knowledge via the Internet. Virtually any piece of information is accessible at the touch of a button. My old, treasured encyclopedias lie stagnant on their bookshelves, covered in an ever-growing layer of dust. Any piece of information I need is online, and the occasions where I open a book to find a piece of information are so rare that I cannot remember the last time I did just that.  I “never” have time to read books anymore; all of my time is sucked up doing online homework, socializing on Facebook, flipping through online news articles, or spending hours bouncing around Wikipedia. Of course, it is an incredible luxury having almost any piece of information at the tip of my fingers. Any question that comes to mind can quickly be typed into Google, and voila, I have thousands of websites related to my question.

            Real books, not the Internet, were once my entire life. I was so excited when my grandfather bought me a beautiful, old copy of The Iliad for my twelfth birthday. The Iliad had been stolen from our local library and I had not had other access to it. I read the book cover-to-cover in two days, and I was so happy to finally be able to read the story that I had been waiting for years to read. Now, books like The Iliad are a click away. The Perseus Digital Library, or the "Perseus Project," is an online library for the largest collection classic books, all in a digitalized form, and available in almost any language, including English and the original Greek or Latin. All of this is available to the general public, free of charge. Not only that, but for each word, name, or idea presented, readers can simply click on a word in the digitalized text to have an immediate pop-up that gives the word's definition, relevance, history, and meaning to the text. These pop-ups also provide links to further sources of information on this word, idea or concept, if you are so inclined as to learn more. Now, when reading The Odyssey online, I have instant access to the text, hundreds of digitalized footnotes that link me directly to the sources they indicate, and links to the maps (both modern and ancient) of the islands mentioned by Homer in his classic story of Odysseus's journey home.

            Other online sources make the contents of millions of books instantly available to anyone. The website eBooks.com offers books of almost any type, including academic, popular, and professional. These books are offered in a digital form that be accessed form that can be downloaded or simply accessed from any computer, PDA or cell phone with the touch of a button. Is the Internet the modern printing press revolution? Is the world changing rapidly because of all of these new, electronic ways of accessing a plethora of knowledge? Now that we have this technology, who needs to bother with the boring, old books anyway?

Well, frankly, I would like to bother with the old, boring books. I dearly miss their simplicity and the quiet, wholesome integrity they afford us. While this abundance of new technology affording instant connection to any information source is astounding, I fear that it is slowly sapping readers of the irreplaceable bond between a reader and a solid, ink and paper book.