Last week, I read a story about the Christian Science Monitor moving from its traditional printed publication to a web-only publication. This bold move was followed by today's announcement that the US News & World Report will be following suit. While I'm not at all surprised, I am disappointed.
I am a lover of books and paper and all things tangible. I love the smell of the newspaper when I spread it out on the kitchen table. I adore flipping through the pages of a new book to get a brief glimpse of "new book smell." Oh, I'm trying to read more digital media. I maintain a couple of blogs and I am a regular reader of dozens of them. I read the daily news online, too. I even read Gone With the Wind on my iPod touch. Talk about a challenge!
My disappointment is not in the change or the technology, but in the impersonal experience digital reading provides. My laptop and iPod just don't form to my hands the way a magazine or book would do. And falling asleep on either of them is just uncomfortable.
I guess I'm just feeling melancholy about the days gone by. I remember reading books late at night, snuggled up in my bed, experiencing Laura Ingalls-Wilder's pioneer life, wishing I didn't have a light to click off, but a candle to blow out like she did. What will my boys do when they get older? Will they, too, long for paper texts? What does this shift to digital texts mean for the meaning of the texts? Our experiences with them are certainly going to change; in what direction will they lead us? Or will we lead them where we want them?
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