Will the Tablet Kill the Novel? – Huffington Post – Warren Adler
Technological advances have enhanced our ability to create a moving record of our lives through video and still photography, helped us connect to people, locally, nationally and internationally, and have improved our research skills and medical diagnosis abilities. It has enhanced our ability to react to events, bring people swiftly together to enlist their cooperation in various causes, air our grievances, and accomplish a thousand other tasks that might have taken past generations days, weeks or months longer to realize.
Such alleged progress cannot be ignored, but neither can the concept of deep, personal reflection, thoughtful concentration, philosophical cogitation, creative imagination and aspects of insight that one can glean from literature which can only be conveyed through the privacy of immersion into a parallel world best dramatized in the imagination through storytelling.
Not quite an ebook v traditional book debate as it’s technology v novel, but he does bring up some good points. Would you rather read classics by flipping paper, or punching buttons? As an owner of a Nook, I still prefer paper to technology, so I can see each side of the argument Adler proposes. Read this – what do you think about the future of the novel?
2 thoughts on “Will the Tablet Kill the Novel? – Huffington Post”
bibliopirate
I think the paper version of books will always remain. There will always be someone trying to make them and someone trying to buy them. They might not be in every home, but hopefully they will remain in most.
Laura
I completely agree. I think about the history of books – for centuries words were written on tablets, skin, and paper, with paper becoming the go-to form for print. We may live in a digital age, but I don’t think things will change drastically. Everyone thought emails would overpower snail mail – that is certainly not the case.