fetishizing books and textualizing the digital

For some time I’ve been perplexed by the way both pro-digitization and pro-book people talk about digitizing books. A crude characterization of the ways in which the two sides depict the argument as having two sides might look like this: pro-digitization: Look, I can access all these wonderful old materials without leaving my armchair! pro-book: Those aren’t books; you can’t feel the paper and breathe in their smell! pro-digitization: But we can create a universal library! pro-book: You’re not creating a library, you’re destroying libraries! pro-digitization: Nyah nyah! pro-book: Pfft! And there you go. The digitization folks talk about access and the book folks talk about being in the presence of the object. Neither side tends to present a more nuanced sense of how they might each have something to offer the other, or to recognize that there might be other considerations and uses at stake. Lest you think I’m…