writerjenn

Technology's on my mind, for 3 reasons:

I was in a pharmacy, and they had several self-checkout lines, and it suddenly hit me how often I'm seeing this now.
My agent, the incomparable Nathan Bransford, has been blogging a lot about Kindle and ebooks in the last couple of weeks.
And what do I see today while cruising the blogs, but a post from Laurie Halse Anderson on Kindle.

So this topic is smacking me in the face. To make an obvious point here, technology changes the world. With Kindle being so heavily in the air this week, I'm especially thinking about how technology will (or won't) change reading.

As an avid reader and writer, I've had my moments of horror over the years whenever someone predicts the demise of the book. But here's where I've come to stand: I don't mind so much if I'm going to be reading text off a screen instead of paper sometime in the future (I do plenty of screen-reading already), but I don't ever want text to be completely replaced by pictures, audio, video, holograms, or anything else.

I love that text allows me to decide, within the boundaries suggested by the author, exactly how everyone in a book looks and sounds. I have my own mental pictures of Anne of Green Gables, Lowood, Holden Caulfield, Manderley, etc., etc., which are more satisfying to me than any movie could be.

I love that I can read at my own pace: I can stop and think, I can reread, I can sprint ahead or slow down. Fast-forwarding and pausing videos or audio recordings are just not the same thing.

I love the rhythm of words in my head.

So, although I do love books printed on paper for many reasons, the essential part to me is the text. I like those other formats, but to me they can't replace text.
Other viewpoints are welcome.