Things That Can't Be Digitized #1

Last fall I hosted a Symposium on the Future of the Book here on campus called "Digital Book Debates."  One of the trends I noticed in planning for that event, was the same trend I notice in the news about the iPad, Google, or anything else relating to the future of books or libraries.  There are two camps in the rhetoric.  Either you are for the complete digitization of the world, as Google's claimed goal at the beginning of their project was "Digitize every book ever printed," or you are pro-print and the books will have to be "pried away from your cold dead hands."

Craig Mod, a computer programmer, in a recent blog post makes a distinction between Formless and Definite content.  Some content is very aware of its container and its boundaries, in this case, it's page, and some is less dependent on the space or object containing it.   Certainly the Kindle demonstrates that blog content, newspaper content, and perhaps even novel content are types that stretch beyond the page so that the delivery platform seems to interfere less with the reading experience.

However, the question that continued to arise as the yays argued with the nays was "prove to me that there is something that cannot be digitized."  When placed on the spot of defending the form + content unity, it is often difficult to grasp for examples, so this series of posts intends to do exactly that.  Present some examples, or thought exercises if you will, about items where the form cannot (at least currently) be divorced from its physical content, rendering Google's goal of "digitizing all books" impossible unless they more clearly define their terms.

Item #1:  The Wonders of the Stereoscope, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1976.

This boxed set contains one more traditional "book" and another book that opens as a shell and contains about 40 sterographic images and a viewer.  the combination of text, images, book as container box, and accompanying image objects is particularly difficult for digitization. Viewing the 3D effect of sterographs on a screen is incredibly difficult since the viewer and the screen interfere with one another.  In addition, part of the thrill of looking at sterographs is the manipulation of them.  You hold them, choose them, load them in the viewer, and see the 3D effect appear.  That physicality cannot be digitized.  Finally, there is the problem of focal length.  In order to view them correctly and acheive the effect, each person has to manipulate the viewer, pull it slightly closer or farther away to make it work for your eyes.  That cannot currently be acheived if the image in on a screen.