Earlier this week I wrote (as I often do) about history and the way we think about it. In that piece, I linked to a great speech delivered five years ago at Hillsdale College by the historian Wilford M. McClay.
In that speech, McClay was promoting a history textbook he had written called Land of Hope. According to him, among the many great qualities of his text is that it is an actual tangible, physical, hold-in-your-hand book.
This seemingly obvious attribute rises in meaning when you consider that the textbook industry giant Pearson recently announced its plans to “go digital-first” with its huge catalogue of textbooks.
No need to wait several years and issue “new editions” when you want to revise the past — or your interpretation of it. Now you can do it with a click of a button. Imagine how much more productive Winston Smith could have been with such technology!
In one sense, this horror is already here, since the idiot public (of which I am one) more and more uses Wikipedia and search engines (and now, AI) to “learn” about the past.
But still, you’d like to think that an actual history textbook wouldn’t fall prey to such flighty digital machinations. It’s a terrible idea to erase the relative permanence of the written word. The study of history is already difficult enough, thank you very much!
McClay outlines the problem very well by describing the important differences to our species between the spoken word and the written word:
“In the early years of printing, printers would often display a truncated version of a Latin proverb: Littera scripta manet, which means, ‘The written letter remains.’ The whole proverb reads: Vox audita perit littera scripta manet, which can be translated, ‘The heard voice perishes, but the written letter remains.’ It contrasts fleeting orality and settled literacy. What does such a proverb mean today, when our civilization—in which the great majority of inhabitants, as Christians and Jews, have been People of the Book—is fast becoming a civilization inhabited by People of the Screen, people tied to the ever-changing, ever-fluid, ever-malleable presentation of the past made possible by the nature of digital technology?”
“Fleeting orality and settled literacy”. I love that phrase. It’s not to say that books are somehow “written in stone” or that they are always accurate or anything like that. But the fact that they are permanent in a way that the spoken word (or the digital entry) isn’t, means something.
A physical book is a semi-permanent record of what a person thought at a certain time and in a certain place. It’s a marker of a narrative that existed. As long as we don’t channel Ray Bradbury’s “firemen”, a book will stick around and be available for future generations to read and reflect on.
Will that be the case for “digital textbooks”?
Functionally, I doubt it. For all the wonderful advantages our digital technologies afford us — we are both using them now — I will be truly heartbroken if/when we abandon physical books and undeletable records forever.
Maybe we can figure out a compromise. Digital backups? Safely stored iterations of previous works that are (by custom, if not law) inviolate?
I don’t know. Somebody page Elon Musk. Maybe he can solve this conundrum.
I can’t fix it. I’m complicit. I am now offering poker (or anything, really) coaching services in a digital medium. I also hawk Tom Woods’s Liberty Classroom, a digital dashboard education platform teaching history, economics, philosophy, and much more. And I promise, he doesn’t “1984” the courses.
So, future humans: Do as I say, not as I do! Don’t abandon physical books. Our species needs that semi-permanence. If our past is malleable, we lose our ability to chart our future.
Naturally,
Adam
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Thanks very much for your attention.
Adam, you're right. Of course you're right. You're always right.
I remember how it felt reading about Winston Smith's job with the newspaper and the crawling of the skin about the whole thing. Digital, indeed, makes it so much easier. Poof, the past is gone without a trace. That's for real.
On the other hand, I love my Kindle and being able to carry around every textbook I could ever want on a device I can put in my pocket is a huge win. Not having to hold open a bound stack of paper is so much more comfortable and less tiring. I love a digital world and the consumption story of digital media is so much easier on the reader. I don't want to give that up in order to have a permanent record. Now, with a device like the Kindle Scribe, sized for consuming heavier materials, including textbooks and with seamless note-taking capabilities, it's a great time to be a consumer.
Still, you're right. Now we're at war with Eurasia. Now East Asia. Ultimately, that's the winning argument on this matter. It's there for abuse and abuse it they will.
There is an answer, though.
Blockchain.
A decentralized record of the entire history of the changes to a publication would make it so that nothing is lost. Let them edit the publication, the old form is still there for inspection. It's the way.
Of course, you'd have to have these publishers putting their materials onto a public ledger. That's a barrier.
Still, in the same way that Bitcoin solves money and makes the ledger a secure, distributed, honest reality, it can work for digital media, too.
I think our growing distrust of digital and AI is strengthen our appreciation for actual interactions and the good ol’ hardcover. Thank you, Adam.