Ebooks don’t spell the end of literature

E-readers pose no threat to books — quite the opposite, they may just re-kindle a generation’s love for the written word

The other day I was on a train, reading a book. The young woman seated next to me was also reading a book. We were both enjoying classics of English literature — hers was a Charlotte Brontë novel. The only difference was that my book was made of paper, and hers of light on the screen of an e-reader.

Books are changing; but are the fundamentals of reading and writing? Seeing a reader gripped by digital Brontë made me aware that electronic books are giving literacy a new dimension. Many people like this new way of enjoying a book, and some may prefer it. Look at it this way: since the 1960s when transistor radios and — by the end of the decade — colour televisions transformed popular culture, every new technological advance has strengthened the appeal of the sort of media that rivals the book. Music and film, TV and video games: all have outshone books in technological glamour. Now, suddenly, here is a technological way to read a book. It’s kind of cool.

I don’t believe this technology will destroy the printed object; real books will never lose their charm. But people who see today’s new ways of reading as a threat are fantasising. Literacy has been under attack for decades, from all directions. Reading suffered its worst assault, perhaps, from television. My grandmother used to read all the time — in fact she was the village librarian — but you wouldn’t find many people in that same village today with the TV off, their heads in books. It is therefore surely arguable that e-readers are not the destroyers but the saviours of the book. A generation may return to the written word because of this technology.

Internet: <http://www.theguardian.com> (adapted).