If we are anxious about the future of how we read, can we but look to other paper-to-digital transformations that we have either witnessed, or readily recall, in order to gain a sense of what will happen?

People used to sit at desks and write (by hand) letters on paper with ink. Of course paper and pen have not disappeared, yet the act of writing a hand-written letter or reliance on such means for communication has vanished.

When e-mail was invented, I’m sure the same people who are now anxious about the electronic reader felt trepidation and wonder. Though our society adapted to e-mail fluidly, the extent to which our society has and will adapt to the e-reader is yet to be decided.

In every media transformation (from traditional to digital) it is a fearful nostalgia that keeps us totally unyielding. But, in this digital time, we have not yet maintained obstinacy.

Attached to this nostalgia is the fear of losing a piece of what it means to be human. Humans have always read on some kind of organic device, so what are we if that is not so anymore? The e-reader is a new device, and if our society accepts it more and more, we lose the book as object. The question arises, then, what is most precious: the object, the text or can either not be divided?

In the case of e-readers, the actual text is just the same as in a traditional published book, yet the experience of the physical book is discarded. Could e-reading increase the amount of every day reading for people, allow for easier dispersion of literature, or cheapen written works?

E-mail provides extraordinary convenience and efficiency, and e-readers lend just the same qualities. We do not receive personal letters in the mail (except from Grandma) much anymore, and, so, ones we do receive are usually stored in a box. Will paper books, too, end up as artifacts of another time?

Doubtless, electronic reading will eventually replace books for technology is not something easily protested. But, how do we react to this new form of reading and how quickly will we let it replace the familiar mode?

In this digital age, first-world societies and the individuals within them are emulating the machines we have created. How immediate? How efficient? How cutting-edge? To lean toward these goals in one’s day to day life is a result of this great mimicry of the computer, the device that is everything we are trying to be. In this process, the human is being digitized.

For now, we are literally digitizing our external world (books, letters, media, etc.) while we stumble with the questions of what is inside us or what is left.

Jonas Griffin can be reached at   [email protected]