TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Damien G. Walter’ Category

By Damien G. Walter

As if the co-dependent relationship between coffee and books isn’t strong enough, today’s Guardian says British bookseller Blackwell’s is deploying the first in a new generation of Espresso Book Machines (EBM’s) in autumn.

The news seals the deal between the printed page and the world’s most popular legal stimulant. After all, print-on-demand technology will print and bind any of a million books at a rate of 40 pages a minute, while you wait—and maybe sip, if coffee’s handy. Photo is of a Blackwell’s on Broad Street, Oxford.

Good for e-books

Does this long-awaited new technology spell disaster for fans of the e-book? No, in fact the outcome will be quite the opposite. The new paradigm of "click and brick" book sales will open up the relationship between content and delivery to the book-buying public, and in the process make the purchase of e-books an everyday event for most regular readers.

Currently most readers familiar with the printed book see content and delivery mechanisms as one and the same thing. The book rolls both elements into one handy package, just as the DVD does for film or the CD for music. But as consumers of those media are increasingly aware, the CD / DVD is only one delivery mechanism for digital video / audio content, one increasingly challenged by broadcast, downloads, on-demand or other delivery mechanisms.

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By Damien G. Walter

Moderator: Damien G. Walter, a much-published U.K. writer of "weird and speculative fiction," is our latest contributor. Welcome, Damien! - D.R.

The other day my self discipline failed, and after weeks of craving I bought a video game. Addictions are never broken; they are only tamed. Eventually they will escape the leash and savage a passing pedestrian. For weeks I’ve been browsing the game shops, debating the for and against of giving in to temptation. This time the for side won, but for a very simple reason: giving in to the addiction was also the best way of kicking it.

I avoid video games for many reasons, but primarily because I am a writer. If you want to write professionally, video games are the kiss of death. Writing requires the investment of time, and video games are the world’s greatest time waster. Worse, video games aren’t good for the upper brain functions that provide advanced language skills. I’m not saying that video games make you stupid, but they certainly don’t make you eloquent.

Functional reading—the Web kind—vs. the advanced variety

As a writer, I also follow closely the continuing debate about the demise of reading. Not functional reading, which is fine and dandy, what with the Internet bringing people in the billions to text-based Web pages, forums, chat and so forth. But advanced reading, of the kind that will empower a person to access the incredible knowledge and joy of reading a novel or work of creative non-fiction, is rumored to be in sharp decline.

Those are rumors I’ve seen corroborated first-hand, having spent the last five years working to develop literacy with young people. Teenagers simply do not read for pleasure in the numbers they did even twenty years ago. And the cause of this titanic shift away from reading can be squarely placed at the foot of the digital revolution, of which video games are a leading part.

No matter how beautiful the graphics…

My video game addiction started as a teenager. I was part of the first generation to grow up with video games. When I look back at the Sinclair Spectrum games that got me hooked, followed by the early 16-bit consoles, I’m amazed by how excited I was by games like Manic Miner or Target:Renegade, and how basic they were compared to the spectacular graphical feats of modern gaming. But I also always found gaming frustrating, as though I were aware even then that something was missing from those games, something that is still missing, and something that graphics no matter how beautifully rendered can never provide.

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