The Guardian 27 February, 2008
Culture and Life
by Mireya Castaneda
How will we be reading tomorrow?
Apparently, the scene from Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report showing a passenger on the subway reading a newspaper that automatically "refreshes" itself electronically will soon be a reality.
The media has taken the first steps in using the greatest new technology invented since Guttenberg’s press: e-paper (electronic paper). These consist of flat screens as thin as paper and flexible enough to roll up.
Humorously, e-paper advocates claim that we won’t have to sit in front of our computers anymore, and newspapers won’t fly out of our hands at the beach, either. Best of all, they say, there will no longer be a need to cut down so many forests or pollute the environment.
The European media is pioneering e-paper’s use. The Belgian De Tijd, the French Les Echos, the Dutch De Volkskrant, the Swedish Sundsvall Tidning, a local newspaper.
For the moment, newspapers involved in the project have a special format that downloads automatically onto PCs via the Internet.
Paperless newspapers have arrived. Twenty years ago, they were science fiction, 10 years ago they were the future and now they are a reality. Naturally, that is, for developed countries. A telephone line, Internet access and the possibility of paying its still-high costs are all needed.
It would be retrograde to deny people such a wonderful technological advance. The change is a total one. Imagine what will happen, how many debates, doubts, obstacles will come up, while many people are already concerned about e-books, and the online bookstores and libraries that hold millions of titles in digital format. For example, paper dictionaries and encyclopaedias are literally losing their storage space.
Consultations, including of the official dictionary of the Real Academia de la Lengua Española (Royal Academy of the Spanish Language), are done online. Along with speed, they have the advantage of links to numerous articles on the subject of interest.
Cuba is not completely removed from new technology; it does not yet have e-paper, but one thing it does have — for example, and according to the announcement by Iroel Sánchez, President of the Cuban Book Institute at the International Book Fair’s inauguration — is books in digital format.
The book fair’s program includes "On-line Readings," the presentation of existing websites such as Cubaliteraria, others dedicated to National Award winners, and the Biblioteca de Clásicos cubanos (Library of Cuban Classics), by the Fernando Ortiz Foundation.
A Taiwanese firm will manufacture 60,000 e-papers per month, while in Dresden, a factory is being built to produce more than 8 million units this year.
How will books be affected by the new technology? This is one of the discussions taking place in the world of literature and publishers.
A book is an object, a medium. There are two interesting terms here: medium, and in that aspect, a technological change; and object, about which a certain fetishism may be observed.
In reality, isn’t a book’s value based on how interesting it is and the quality of the text? This century is witnessing a new medium for literature.
Certainly, there are some disadvantages to the e-book. The first is the paroxysm of solitude.
While it is true that reading, like writing, is a personal act, a book fair like the one in Havana propitiates communication among readers themselves, who search for, leaf through, buy, compare, propose and interact with writers, who present their new titles and are interested in this interrelationship. Words — as Graziella Pogolloti said — take shape through readers, who transform them.
E-books would change the whole fair projection, whether in Havana, Frankfurt or Buenos Aires. You wouldn’t have to go anywhere to see or buy.
Books, a centuries-old object, will continue to be in the hands of readers. Perhaps for some time still on paper, further ahead on e-paper, and then... surely, it will be in the arts, such as cinema, and in science fiction literature, that new versions are proposed, which later on, will go from being chimeras to reality.
The question will always be: how will we read tomorrow?