Screen and Book

The book is another screen.

The content of what is contained in books is increasingly just a faithful replication of content we would come across on screens. The balance between text and image, the play of the visual within text itself, and the play of typology and design in the contemporary book makes new content screen-friendly or something likely encountered on-screen. But also, the writing itself is writing one would create on a screen, either on a word processor or on the net itself (email, etexts, etc.).

This is another facet of the transformation in the environment for communicating pointed out by the authors of WiredStyle. 'Ignore your audience at your peril.' When your audience can torch your screen, your page, or your book with a simple click, there is a pressure to engage your audience much more readily, more aggressively than before. You must come at your audience compellingly, or lose them. The printed book takes place in the same media environment and so must appeal in the same way.

It would appear that one of the most celebrated effects of the book, and of print generally, is that it turns writers into authors. These are distinguished from mere writers, scribes, or content-providers, by their monolithic status, their self-identity, their privilege, their authority, their internal coherence, their absolute distinctness.

The urge to 'break into print,' to raise the dignity of one's writing to the status of the printed object, still appeals to us and will continue to appeal because of this peculiar effect of print. It remains the only medium capable of producing this effect. To want to be printed is to want to transform oneself in this way -- from an ephemeral, clefted psyche to a hard, coherent self.

Our nostalgia for the effects of print will not be easily overcome, because so many institutions fundamental to contemporary democracy are integrally related to them. The self-identical, distinct, independent, analytic, verbal self is the very pillar of the legal and political system, and by extension the economic and social system.

The computer and the network are transforming these systems by creating an alternative paradigm. In the network paradigm, the self is no longer self-identical, and writing is no longer monolithic or authoritative. The network suspends the effect of law and the status of the polis as the unit of political meaning. It creates an economic environment all its own, one based on speed and efficiency as opposed to trust, law, and force. And the social environment is one based on community and teams as opposed to hierarchy and authorities.

In the network age, the two polar extremes of the social order begin to drift away from the old print oriented, politically loyal middle class. That class, though dwindling in number, maintains a belief in the reality of the polis, the identity of the nation, and print authorities. Beneath that class is the expanding proletariat of mainly immigrant or "white trash" service workers, low wage labourers, and welfare recipients, who are functionally illiterate, take television, film, and the net as their primary media, and are increasingly marginalized and disempowered by the state. Above the middle class is the expanding capitalist class of investors, entrepreneurs, professionals and other 'symbol manipulators,' as Reich put it. This class informs itself through all the various media, maintaining no privilege for the printed book over the computer, but enjoying a high degree of literacy and a high comfort level with verbal forms of expression. This class utilizes the advanced technologies of the network to circumvent the material limitations of the state, and to partake of an economy and social order of a global, post-national character.

What then of the status of verbal communication in the age of the network?

It would seem that in this, the first phase of network expansion, the status of the verbal as a mass medium has been maintained not by choice but because of the limitations of the medium itself. As bandwidth increases, visual forms of expression will certainly further marginalize verbal forms, but it seems unlikely that it will entirely eclipse or obviate them.

The central issue is whether or why verbal writing, and the alphabet in particular, is indispensable for the present cultural order, for civilization itself. It may not be, but it will probably continue to seem so for a number of reasons. One significant reason is the fact that law in the first world depends on and functions in its present form with a close dependence on verbal written expression. The economy itself also seems to rely as much on numeracy as it does on the rhetorical ingenuity of the investment and entrepreneurial class.

But this is secondary to a more important fact: verbal communication, or the verbal order itself, can never be marginalized to the point extinction. The verbal still occupies and will always occupy a central role -- perhaps the central role -- in communication between people. When people want to entertain, convey matters of importance, or accomplish non-trivial tasks, verbal language is indispensable. The image might become an important part of communicating verbally, but the verbal will always be present. The question is what part the alphabet, and the written word will play.

The talking self is still absolutely central to the cultural, and always will be. Larry King, David Letterman, Oprah, Howard Stern all serve functions that are greater than mere acting or appearing on television. They have a skill at spontaneous, entertaining utterance that we value as highly as any well written script, and far above mere visual scenery. The voice and what they do with it is central to their allure.

But the concept of voice comprehends a great deal: storyteller, joke teller, guru, teacher, and of course poet. All of these perennial, absolutely seminal modes of verbal communication are indispensable to us. They cannot be marginalized by any measure of visuality. Their expression through the medium of the alphabet might, however, be marginalized to a great extent by visual means, but not entirely. For the following reason.

The alphabet privileges the voice, the speaking self as its content. So, for somebody seeking some verbal form of expression -- a teaching, humour, poetry, etc. -- forms of verbal writing (ie., written text or recorded verbal communication) will serve this purpose. People still have a significant desire for strictly or mainly verbal communication, and although books are not the only or even the main form of this communication, being a source of it is good enough to insure its survival to some degree.

So why do we choose to resort to verbal expression through the medium of the alphabetic writing? What is it about the space of alphabetic writing that so appeals to us?