Opus hates eliterature
Published by Mark Marino May 10th, 2005 in HCTI.In this Sunday’s paper, the new, bizarre reincarnation of Opus decided to return to his Banana Jr. technology satire, to rehash the most frequently hashed argument against ebooks: “Book lovers never go to bed alone.”
In other words, you can’t take a book to bed.
I’m not sure why Opus goes into hysterics, retreating to his bedroom to be buried under books next to a sleeping Bill the Cat? Who are these booklovers that are so threatened by eliterature? Where is the successful eliterature that is grinding away at the book market? How does my electronic fiction assault their pleasurable page turning? Who raises the argument that electronic writing should replace printed books? What has technology ever done to them?
Robert Coover long ago said the Golden Age of hypertext has ended. Yet Opus protesteth too much.
Opus is here remediated using the words “I hate eliterature” using the TypeDrawing system that Christy described.
I agree - the Opus argument is odd (unmotivated hysteria) and trite. However, I think I see a clue in the hypermediated camera-screen arrangement trained on Opus during the conversation, so that Opus can only interact with his interlocuter via talking on-screen (web comics, anyone?)
The argument, simply put, is that a book is a physical object. When you are asleep, it is still there, almost vulgar in robust truth. An internet-recalled file, on the other hand, is not “there.”
Stupid? Yes. The file is just a real, it is just a really different real.
However, in defense of Opus, I’d like to point out that there is a technorati argument that looks a lot like this Luddite one. When dealing with proprietary file formats and *especially* DRM, don’t think just because you are reading the first page on your screen now that you actually have the book. You may wake up in bed the next morning and find that, in fact, you don’t. Digital Millenium-type logic constantly insists that, despite the DVD being in your player, your right to watch is endlessly contingent. The book on the other hand is an artifact of an era where, barring breaking and entering, you wake up with it next to you. With digital media the other owners have already snuck into your house, and might at any moment spirit it away.