Thomas_More
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I had to work too, but I always took a book with me to read during breaks and lunchtime. Of course this could have its own problems, such as other workers grabbing my book and throwing it about the room, inserting porn magazine pictures in it when I wasn’t there, etc.
Their children are no doubt now among the chorus led by those announcing “the end of print.”The worst thing is to see rubbish skips outside libraries, full of books to be sent to the tip. They are replaced with computers.
Reading for pleasure is an idea that is alien to the “go for it” student, whose priority is to get the highest wage-slave price ticket in life he or she can.
Enjoying holding a book, musing, contemplating, reading it for pleasure is incomprehensible to an increasing number; and, once harnessed, most wage-slaves say they “don’t have the time.”
I still value my non-fiction books too, such as my beautiful books on cinema, and general, history. Some things thought to be true at the time they were published have been disproven since, but I still cherish the books; and cherish them more than a newly, poorly, printed updated textbook with photocopies in place of beautiful photos. I take the updated information on board but keep and love my “outdated” originals as part of me.
But then, I am not a student being made to read things for exams.
In Switzerland I tried to open a conversation with a student I saw reading a novel by Dickens. I asked him what he liked about it, and he replied “I don’t know. I’m reading it for an exam.” It was just information as far as he was concerned (and, unlike me, he probably passed!) Similarly, students here in England were popping bubbly cheap Champagne as they toppled out of the exam hall, one girl shouting, “GREAT! I’LL NEVER HAVE TO READ ANOTHER BOOK IN MY LIFE! YIPPEE!”
For them too, books were mere information.Again, in terms of working class students in colleges you are right.
But a book for me is not just information.
For mere information we have textbooks and the internet, and pamphlets (such as our party pamphlets).
I support you, and I know that under capitalism us bibliophiles will become an ever shrinking minority, considered “saddos” by the majority; and yes, we will increasingly have to make do.
I was just saying that in a socialist society we wouldn’t have to.
Nice ideas, but they are all about “making do”, aren’t they? Why should we have to make do?
My books each hold for me memories and stages, emotional as well as merely intellectual, in my life. I don’t see why books should all be relegated to text alone and why we should have to make do with computer print-outs, no matter how they are put together.
In socialism we would all have free access to the means of production and have real books made traditionally should we want, even a minority of us. We can have spiral textbooks but also bound and sewn traditional books. We wouldn’t be expected to make do.
I don’t think people in a world that is our own would want to be sat in front of screens for the most part. I think they will want the tangible in life in preference to the virtual. And if not, then the minority who do will have the tangible as our choice; a real choice. We won’t have to make do.
I have no problem with a balance between print and digital. It’s the destruction of books, the substituting digital for everything, the digitalist bravache about “the end of print”, and the disappearance of print magazines etc. that I hate.
