For the author of Open Work , The Name of the Rose and many remarkable works, the book is one of those inventions, like the spoon or the wheel, they belong to eternal technology, essentially unchanged.
By Umberto Eco
For the nation-Milan 1995
days ago, zapping idly by, I found a channel where they were spending a lot of spot or announcement of a transfer to come. It was advertising the wonders of the CD-ROM, or cos disquitos, hypermedia can give us the equivalent of an encyclopedia, with colors, sounds and possibilities of instantaneous connections between songs. As I'm doing some experience in this field, and therefore knew the argument, followed him casually. Until, at some point, I heard even my name: it was saying that I would argue that these disquitos definitely replace books.
No, unless it is a paranoid, you can pretend that the other read everything you write, but at least you can expect not to make you say otherwise, especially if they are using it illegally, as a witness in any thing. It is a fact that I repeat to the four winds, the CD-ROM may not replace the book. Or who made this text is an idiot or a liar. There are no other possibilities. In any case should have been sterilized time parents, it's too late.
There are two types of books: those that serve to check and used to read. The first (prototype phone is, but extends to dictionaries and encyclopedias) occupy too much room in the house, are unwieldy and expensive. They may be replaced by multimedia discs, so there will be more room in the house and library for books that are used to read (ranging from the Divine Comedy to the latest police).
reading books may not be substituted by any electronic device. Are meant to be taken in hand, putting them to bed, or on a boat, even where no battery power, even where and when any battery is discharged, it can be underlined, bear marks señalalibros can be dropped in floor or on the knees when we surprised the dream go in the pocket, ajan, assume a physiognomy indiviudal according to intensity and frequency of our readings, remind us (if they are too cool and smooth) that we have not yet touched; read by putting his head as we want, without imposing a fixed and strained reading of a computer screen, very friendly in all respects except for the neck. Try to read the entire Divine Comedy, even if only one hour per day on a computer, and then they tell me.
A book to read is in the miracles of technology that eternal part wheel, knife, spoon, hammer, pan, the bicycle. The knife was invented soon, the bike much later. But rather than be anxious designers, modifying some particularity, the essence of the knife is always the same. There are machines that replaced the hammer, but for some things will have to resort to something that resembles the first hammer appeared on the face of the Earth. May develop a highly sophisticated system changes, but labicicleta remains what it is: two wheels, a seat and two pedals. Otherwise called scooter or something else.
Humanity has gone before reading and writing for centuries on rocks first, then on small panels later on labels, but it was an arduous job. When he discovered that they could link together some leaves, although handwritten, gave a sigh of relief. And it can never give up this wonderful instrument.
The way the book is determined by our anatomy. It may have very large, but in general they function or decorative paper: the book standard should not be smaller than a pack of cigarettes or larger than the Espresso. Simensiones depends on our hands, and these, at least for now, have not changed.
is true that technology promises to machines with which we could explore, via computer, libraries around the world, to choose texts that interest us, have them printed at home in minutes with the characters we want-in our grade Presbyopia and our aesthetic preferences, "while accommodating our own copier sheets and links, so that each may consist of custom work. And then? Which have disappeared up the fonts, traditional unions, but we will have in their hands, once again, and always a book. Translation
Antonio Alberti, La Nacion.
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