Gutenberg Graveyard

I won’t deny that I have one foot in the Guttenberg graveyard and the other on a computer generated image of a banana peel. Hand-written parchment and papyrus preceded the printing press. Earlier yet, Frenchmen drew on the walls of the caves of Lascaux, and Egyptians carved and painted hieroglyphics in the tombs of the pharaohs. Who knows what silicon and laser humans will employ to satisfy their irresistible urge to communicate their experiences and imaginations?

Electronic gadgets frustrate me. I get impatient, push the wrong button, and everything stops working, sometimes setting off an alarm, like a signal for the cops or the fire department. Usually the only thing clear about the instructions is that English is not their mother tongue. Nonetheless I have read with interest and curiosity the recent NEWSWEEK article about the release of a new electronic book device by internet bookseller Amazon. Called the Kindle, the gadget is far from the first, only the latest e-reader. The price for the Kindle is $399 each. Still, when I checked Amazon.Com three weeks before Christmas, they were all sold out and would not promise delivery until after the big gift giving day. I didn’t really want one, anyway. There are other manufacturers of e-readers, and stores such as Best Buys advertise them as available. I don’t really want one of them, either. I’ll wait till the price drops to the low double-digits like the portable CD player I bought at Wal-Mart.

My interest in these devices really focuses on the future of the written word. No doubt books, newspapers, magazines are losing people’s attention today. Does that mean people don’t or won’t read? My Antioch College writing professor Nolan Miller told me several years ago that there were getting to be “too many writers and not enough readers.” Probably true. Nolan taught writers for 50 years and was fiction editor of The Antioch Review at least as long. Maybe he died before he could see how this situation only creates a certain democracy in the flow of ideas and communications, even as it shakes up the economics of publishing and writing.

The blog you are reading does not require that I affiliate myself with some commercial conglomerate, other than the internet itself. Nobody tells me what to write about, how to write it, or when. That’s the good news. The bad news is nobody pays me for it, either. I guess the time will come when I can make my own novel or collection of poems available to the e-reader market. Maybe in time also, some methods of payment will evolve. I hope so. Otherwise, the only people who can devote the thought and time to it will be the wealthy, the retired, and those with sinecures in the royal court. There is also the issue of copyrights, which protect creative and intellectual property. I am sorry to say that technology has failed so far to prevent blatant theft of copyrighted works by consumers with easy access and no conscience or awareness that they are stealing the food from another person’s table.

The music industry, through performing rights representatives ASCAP and BMI, offers a tried and true model. They collect licensing fees from record labels, radio and television broadcasters, bars and restaurants, and most recently the internet, and establish ways of measuring the use of copyrighted music. This is one of the main ways musicians and composers earn money for their work, just like the paycheck you get from your job. Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, the estate of George Gershwin, and many songwriters without famous names get paid this way. Next time you download something you did not pay for, think about it.

Copyright 2007 by William C. Cotter