This (pointing) Is A Book (Update)

Walking around Christiane Amanpour’s apartment on Central Park West the other day, I found myself reading the titles of the books on her shelves.  She had a remarkable collection of books, interspersed with photographs of her and important people, ranging from presidents to the Dalai Lama.

From behind me, a woman muttered, “I wonder what this would look like with Kindle.”

Much can be learned about a person by looking at the books they keep.  There’s only one thing that can be learned about a person if all those books are replaced by Kindle.  They have no soul.

In the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Mary Graber writes about the Slackoisie and books.

My students snicker when I tell them to smell books.

The ones who think I can’t tell that they have been surfing the Web instead of typing notes turn from their screens and look at me as if I had grown a third eye.

“Yes,” I say, “go to the library shelves. Pull out an old book and smell it.”

This is not something they can Google, as they often do when I present information outside of their comfort zones.

It’s not that Graber sees no place for Wikipedia in society, but that they have no respect for those old things called books.  They don’t give them easy answers at the touch of a button, bringing them right to the point without having to waste time wading through all that extraneous stuff like reasoning, explanation, history and understanding.

Today’s students think knowledge comes at the keyboard, from sites such as Wikipedia. I learned at a recent teaching workshop on Millennials that a common complaint seen on evaluations is “the teacher acted like she knew more than the students.”

Imagine that, teachers who think they know stuff that students don’t.  Outrageous!

But this trend parallels the loss of respect for books, which represent the shoulders of giants on whom we stand looking backward at the wisdom that came before us, to paraphrase Edmund Burke. The teacher, who has studied the books — solid and unchanged by random strokes of the keyboard — should offer a repository of wisdom. But current pedagogy encourages teachers to be “facilitators” who stand aside while children learn from peers in groups. Workshops on using digital media, and even cellphones, in the classroom add to the demise of the book — and to the demise of the idea of authority and lasting values.

That the Slackoisie, with their stunted grasp of reasoning and logic, and overextended valuation of their own qualities and competence, are confident that there is no question they will ever need to answer that can’t be found in a few seconds and a few keystrokes.  They are full of their prowess of technology, unaware of their inability to understand it.

Oscar Wilde called a cynic someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.  The parallel is alarming.  And no doubt beyond the ken of the Slackoisie to appreciate.  After all, there’s no wikipedia entry for why the Slackoisie don’t get it.

So next time a millennial has a desire to put something up their nose, he should consider going to a library and smelling a book.  It’s one of those old, dusty things on the shelves that contains not only the specific fact you’re looking for but all the understanding it takes to appreciate the significance of the fact.  But do it quickly, as it may not be there for long.

H/T Stephanie at Idealawg

Update:  Greg Lambert fires back: Your books smell like elderberries.  Of course, they are no longer books, but “information resources.”  Greg’s post has a great video of Don Tapscott rationalizing the corruption of the Slackoisie and terrific comments.

27 thoughts on “This (pointing) Is A Book (Update)

  1. Doug Cornelius

    Chris Anderson has a great statement on books in his latest book, FREE:

    “For all their cost disadvantages, dead trees smeared into sheets still have excellent battery life, screen resolution, and portability, to say nothing about looking lovely on shelves.”

    But I am not sure about the smell. Last year, I was helping my librarian throw out some out-of-date and unused books in our expensive big law firm space. I was coughing for days after that. I think that smell is the odor of decomposition and growing mold.

  2. Zach

    I’m a 1L, and a 30-year-old bibliophile. Happened up open up volume 1 of U.S. Reports in the library the other week. Underneath the ugly 20th century binding is a beautiful ~250 year old letterpress artifact of American history. And I’ve been hesitant to share my excitement with my classmates, because I’m afraid they just won’t understand. . . .

  3. Ken

    Content is king. The words — and how they are edited or restricted — are the key.

    I had a professor who asserted that the experience of reading a book was inferior if not done in the library — preferably, the Bodleian. I myself find that reading is much more enjoyable in companionable silence with my wife, who is also a huge reader. I don’t like to read Shakespeare except with my father’s college text that he had re-bound for me.

    But these are cultural preferences about form, not about substance. You are absolutely right on your point about folks who believe that they have nothing to learn from teachers. But your disdain for new tech used to carry content, and your fellow visitor’s disdain for Amanpour’s books, exist on the same continuum.

    If kids are exciting about reading something on the Kindle, I am just as happy as if they are excited about reading it in a volume that smells of the library.

  4. Max Kennerly

    The author of that apparently isn’t even a teacher, just “a writer.” Lord knows what “students” she’s talking about, or how representative any of those comments are. I might as well point out that one time that guy with a New York plate cut me off to conclude that all New Yorkers are rude.

    The rest of it looks like double or triple hearsay: someone at some conference said this thing was true, based on some casual recall by someone else, so I’m going to repeat it as true.

    I love how she claims books are “solid and unchanged by random strokes of the keyboard.” Pure drivel written by someone who has obviously never engaged in any real humanities research of any type. Grab any non-fiction book in any library and I assure you there will be dozens of factual errors and unsupportable conclusions — had the author been “bothered” (her word) to speak with real historians, librarians, or other scholars, she’d know that the output is only as good as the input, which is as flawed as human nature, and that “the wisdom that came before us” is constantly under renewed scrutiny, which is what people like historians do all day.

  5. Karen Wester Newton

    I’m sure the same complaint was made when people switched from scrolls to page format. When they started binding books, people probably complained it was harder to share a book because you had to finish the whole thing before passing it on, unlike loose pages. And when Herr Gutenberg invented the press, everyone distrusted it. Idolizing the format instead of the content strikes me as foolish, especially because an eReader makes out-of-copyright classics available at no additional cost. Is someone who owns Kindle versions of the collected works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, and Eliot inferior in taste to a person who owns a house full of Danielle Steele and category romance novels– all in print form? Is a book “better” in some way if it’s printed in hardback instead of mass market paperback? Personally, I don’t think so, but you’re entitled you your opinion.

  6. Greg Lambert

    I’d actually say it would be judging a lawyer with a $500 suit as a lesser person than a lawyer in a $5000 suit. A personal library, in and of itself, does not make a person great. I’d rather judge the person by their deeds rather than the material items they collect. My argument is that I’d be much more impressed with a person (and their soul) that has read a 100 great books on a Kindle or computer screen than I would with someone with a great physical library that goes unread. Even if that library does smell great!

  7. SHG

    Ah, I now see how you’ve gone astray.  Having a library does not make someone great.  Rather, great people have libraries.  Nor is reading a zero-sum game, with the choices being reading nothing or having a library. As noted to Ken above, Kindle is certainly better than not reading at all, but those aren’t the only options.

  8. Karen Wester Newton

    “Much can be learned about a person by looking at the books they keep. There’s only one thing that can be learned about a person if all those books are replaced by Kindle. They have no soul.”

    I am not willing to accept lessons in logic from the person who wrote that statement.

  9. SHG

    It was just a suggestion. I can’t really make you engage in logic at all over the internet.  It’s the nature of the beast.

  10. SHG

    As a science fiction writer, no one would expect you to be able to differentiate between rational arguments and emotional ones.  But the least you can do is leave witty comments.  Maybe you could dig up an Oscar Wilde quote from wikipedia?

  11. Karen Wester Newton

    If you’re going to knock an entire genre (and on HG Wells’ birthday, too), maybe we could all start telling lawyer jokes? They even sell them in printed books, not just list them on websites.

  12. SHG

    A much better effort.  Not quite the panache of an Oscar Wilde, but the HG Wells birthday was a nice touch.  But I don’t knock a genre at all. I’m quite fond of science ficntion, particularly Heinlein, from whom I quote often.  And as lawyer jokes go, I love them.  I even have a book of them on my shelf.  Care to smell it?

  13. Jdog

    As a science fiction writer, no one would expect you to be able to differentiate between rational arguments and emotional ones.

    Ahem. Those of is in the trade need to do just that; it’s one of the basic tools if you’re going to persuade somebody to willingly suspend disbelief. (The ability to do that, by the way, is useful in a lot of trades — including your own.)

  14. SHG

    Really?  Then I am remiss in allowing Karen Wester Newton the benefit of the doubt.  I will not make the same mistake with you (he says with a wry smile on his face).

  15. Jdog

    Well, good. Given that I’m busy responding to another post with an argument where I seamfully blend (I can’t hide the seams in 3000 characters) both sorts, that’s just as well…

  16. Anne

    Don’t get me started! Did you ever herd interns? If so, be prepared to hear things like “Oh, you mean court rules are in a book? You wanted me to look at that?”

    My librarian friends tell me that students are often shocked to hear how little information in the world is actually on the Internet.

    As for how this relates to the legal world, sorry-assed research tactics by clerks can and do lead to poor (if not outright incorrect) opinions. And that smells worse than any Kindle.

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