Mies Van De Rohe's Barcelona Chairs @ the College of Environmental Design in Berkeley. Oct. 2009

Reading Lounge at CED Library, Berkeley. Oct. 2009

My absolutely favorite part of Wurster Hall building is the CED library- which is so up to date it has its own facebook and twitter page.
In it, we find large, custom-designed tables with great lighting and comfortable wooden chairs.
Plenty of room to spread out and a wonderful atmosphere for working and studying.
I also love the sitting area with Mies Van De Rohe’s Barcelona chairs, which lends a hint of sophistication to the space and makes it really inviting. You can learn more about chairs’ design here.

A library should feel like a special place, and this one definitely celebrates knowledge and books.

These days, much is said about the future of libraries (and books), in a digital age of downloads and Kindle. Print newspapers are disappearing or undergoing big cuts, and one of my favorite Op Ed contributor at the New York Times covered the issue, saying that desperate times call for desperate measures. Last week the Times also wrote about libraries who are embracing digital lending (albeit on a reservation system).

As an avid book lover and collector, I am intrigued by debate of the future of books (and e-books- does the brain like them?) and ponder about a future in which books will be obsolete or prized collections, such as records are today.

It seems like this topic is covered everyday in one form or another, and now even art has contributed to the  fetishism of the book. Do we celebrate a form of communication right at the moment when that form is losing its relevance? Recently, I have started the whole contents of my library on LibraryThing, and , through this process, I am appreciating my books all over again.
Considering they have made the trip across the pond several times, they are all very expensive books by now, too. A point has to be made that, with the advent of e-books, I would not have to pay hundreds of dollars each time to ship my body of knowledge. I still remember how cumbersome it was to try to bring all my CDs on trip and I am, it’s true, ever-so-thankful for my 120GB Ipod.

Of course book lovers will say that books will never lose its relevance, but when the new generation is getting the book contents via the internet (legally or illegally), and even the University of California Libraries have been collaborating with Google on its mega-scanning project, we need to accept the fait accompli: a paradigm shift is taking place, whether we like it or not. The enviromental cost of printing on paper needs to also be taken in consideration.

The dream is an old one to unify all books ever printed, , in every language, and make that body of knowledge easily accessible. A sort of modern-day version of the Alexandria Library. Sure everyone knows about Google books, but do you know that the Boston Public Library will scan on demand any public domain books you request? And send you a link to download it? That is, I have to admit, incredible.

I will throw my two pennies in the fray: I spend lots of time in front of the screen, and so far, I have found the experience of reading a book (in my case, Death in Venice) online the equivalent of eating junk food. Sure it can fill your stomach, but the quick and easy fix, notwithstanding the empty calories, robs you of the ritual of eating a meal. In Italy there is a movement that is trying to save movie theathers, and it studied the difference between watching a movie in the big screen as opposed to downloading it and watching it on the computer. It surveyed young viewers who were asked to make a drawing after seeing a movie in the movie theather and once again, in the computer screen at home. The difference in the creative output is outstanding. Watching a movie on your laptop does not feel ‘special’ and I do believe some of the magic, the ‘suspension of disbelief’ is lost, when right outside of the borders of your screen you see the laundry that neds to be folded, or dishes needing to be washed. Indeed , once televisions were installed in every home there was also a cry for the ‘death of the movie theather’. As it has been said for drawng, in that case, the advent of tv dinners did not eradicate home cooked meals , just made it more special. Yes, Okay, but if reading abook becomes rarer and rare, how special is it? Could reading in front of a screen kill the magic and wonderment of a story? The e-culture, or i-culture, is exponentially more of vehicle of change than tv ever were for the movie theather. It does more than shift the paradigm: it shatters it.

The digital revolution is here, and like the Nothing in Neverending Story, it will eat the book culture we have now, to substitute it with gadgets increasingly more sophisticated and more ‘realistic’:
[Behold! Perfect imitations of ‘ Real (TM) books’]!
E-book publishers are even claiming that people are reading more now that they have access to electronic book readers.

Soon the books will go the way of music and MP3’s…and when offer is abundant , invariably the value (both economic and of personal attachment) plummets. It is the plastic culture, Andy Warhol would have loved it.

I am sure my dialectic has some holes in it, but I hope you catch my drift.

This is the end of the world as we know it (TM).

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