Here’s a very odd quote from James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress. Thanks to Shelf Awareness for publishing it.
“The new immigrants don’t shoot the old inhabitants when they come in. One technology tends to supplement rather than supplant. How you read is not as important as: will you read? And will you read something that’s a book–the sustained train of thought of one person speaking to another? Search techniques are embedded in e-books that invite people to dabble rather than follow a full train of thought. This is part of a general cultural problem.”
–James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress, in a Newsweek poll of “some literary brains on the future of reading.”
Mr. Billington’s grasp of American history is clearly shaky, either that or he has never heard about what the European immigrants did to the Indians in this country, or the Spanish to the Aztecs. Also, since when is searching a book a distraction? In a print book is it a bad thing to look something up in the index? Doesn’t he know what some print books have things called a glossary and – even worse – some print books have footnotes! Better take them out. Can”t have people dabbling by looking at them.
Very odd, indeed.
Sounds like he was just trying to find some pseudo-intellectual way of saying “old books are better, you kids just don’t understand.”
Agree this was a weird quote, weird history, and weird view of reading. Rather than worry about whether paper books, clay tablets, scrolls, eBooks, or direct-to-retina display books are better, maybe we should all worry about making sure reading at all stays relevant in a world where entertainment (and education) options are extremely broad and varied.
Rob Preece
Publisher
To be fair to him I would suggest that he talking about current immigrants, not historical.
“One technology tends to supplement rather than supplant.”
This is where he is even more wrong. No one I know has any vinyl. No one I know has any cassettes. No one I know uses an abacus. I could go on to pen and ink, steam driven trains, trebuchets……
“Search techniques are embedded in e-books that invite people to dabble rather than follow a full train of thought. This is part of a general cultural problem.”
This is just silly.
“How you read is not as important as: will you read? And will you read something that’s a book”
Well, at least he got one on the money…. 🙂
what he says makes perfect sense as an analogy — invaders do not immediately kill inhabitants because the intruders are at their weakest when they first arrive. Hence Cortez befriended the locals in order to destroy the Aztecs.
Supplementing rather than supplanting is the natural progress of technological innovation. We have had the printing press, typewriter and word-processor, but we still write by hand, like Medieval monks once did on parchment. Record companies slowly adopted digital discs and analogue vinyl and cassettes ceased production eventually. Hence the tendency to supplement rather than an absolute rule to supplant as is the popular view of technological progress.
Will you read? This I love, because he is equating skimming, searching, skipping and other methods of dipping as lacking the will to engage with the author’s mind. I would not have expressed it so, but I cannot deny that he is 100% correct in alluding to the superficiality of engagement with the written word which he opposes to actually understanding.
I like what he said and how he has said it because it is perfectly crafted to demonstrate the very thing he is complaining about and the point he is making.
To understand the quote and unlock the meaning one has to engage with the task of reading and “follow a full train of thought”. It is a in its way a work of minor genius.
Forgive me I could not help it, I will paraphrase Billington:
Don’t worry about eBooks destroying the printed word, because innovations usually supplement the older technology rather than simply dispose of it – it is a false dilemma, they will live side by side for some time yet.
Our real problem is not technology but a general cultural superficiality that fails to engage with literature as a communication of mind between the author and the reader.
A superficiality symbolized by search mechanisms found in the new technology that encourages non-lineal dis-engagement with lineal thought development found in the best of writing.
I personally put this down to a commercial dumbing down of popular culture, a destruction of public education and the positive political endorsement of stupidity, rather than as a result of technology. I think Billington is alluding to much the same thing.