The Obsolescence of Book Burning

Go ahead.  Burn ‘em.  Pile all that paper and set it ablaze.

I mean, save the classics, the irreplaceables, the history.  But the rest?  Marshmallow fuel.  Ambience for camping.

We are come now to the turn of the tide.

Dammit, Apple.  Dammit, Amazon.  Dammit, dammit, dammit.

I’m not happy about it, but it went and happened anyway: solid, tangible, dusty, musty, magical, irreplaceable old books have been replaced.

With Apple’s new announcement that they will begin selling interactive textbooks--replete with videos, graphics, and a built-in dictionary--for $15 on the iPad, technology has finally breached that last line of book defense: textbooks.

Oh, those ponderous dinosaurs with their astronomical price tag and above-average ignorability.  Those monstrous things you heaved from class to class in your European shoulder bag or 100% hemp Whole Earth bag or whatever would help you get the ladies in college.  Remember those?  Yeah, they’re toast.

Even though an iPad is a costly little piece of hardware ($499 for a low-level purchase), you know that price tag is on the way down.  You also know that capable copycats are already popping up left and right (The Kindle Fire, for example...probably more prophetic than they intended), and they are much, much cheaper ($179), although slightly less robust.

But I don’t foresee my school district ponying up the dough for another classroom set of textbooks at $75 a pop, unless those textbooks start getting up and dancing.

It hurts me to write this, it really does, but it’s inarguable.  An interactive textbook, supplemented with videos, graphics, manipulatable models, and a dictionary (seriously?  How awesome is that?), is far and away the better choice for student learning.

And yes, I know that the built-in dictionary isn’t a new development, but it’s awesome that it could be in a textbook.  Students on IEPs would have a field day with those kinds of tools.

I still want to hold books.  I still want to smell them and read off of their gentle paper.  I still want to taste them.  I want to kiss them.

Okay, enough creepiness.

I still enjoy reading books off of good old paper.  That feeling won’t die.  My eyes might someday adjust to reading off of these new-fangled picture radios, but they haven’t yet.  It still relaxes me immensely to sit down with my careworn copy of “The Hobbit” every Christmas, and it always will.

But I can’t look away from the future when it is staring me in the face.

I will have students in the future who have never read a paper book, and that hurts, but it would hurt more to willfully stick my head, shorting my students in the process.

But books.  Ahhh, books.

I changed my mind.  Don't burn them.  Burn the iPads instead.