Apples and Orangutans

There's an interesting opinion piece in today's NY Times about the relative environmental impact of a "book" and an "e-reader."  It brings to bear something I think is crucial in the ongoing debate about the future of books, particularly when the issue is taken up in the popular press: we're still asking the wrong questions.  In "How Green Is My iPad," Goleman and Norris replicate one of the fundamental analogic problems that plague discussions of digital texts, namely the assumption that there is sufficient similarity between "analog" and "digital" documents to perform a one to one comparison.

In order to make the (relatively useless) comparison, digital documents are generally concretized in some fashion.  In the case of the above op-ed piece, digital texts are represented by their access technology with particular emphasis on Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iPad.  My first objection to the inclusion of the iPad is wisely accounted for by the authors; they only focus on those aspects of the technology related to digital text and largely ignore its other, broader functions.  The article then goes through and details the environmental impact of of a generic "book" and a generic "e-reader" in five key categories (materials, manufacture, transportation, reading, and disposal) two of which (transportation and reading) are so widely variable as to render the analysis all but moot.  It also fails to acknowledge the nature of the impact costs of the two objects.  With a "book," whatever that may be, the costs are largely determined and sunk by the time the object reaches your possession.  Its only ongoing costs are storage and, perhaps, patience.  But the costs of maintaining and using an "e-reader," whatever that may be, are theoretically infinite and persist long after the device in question finds its way to your hands.  I'm also somewhat baffled by the assertion that "[i]f you like to read a book in bed at night for an hour or two, the light bulb will use more energy than it takes to charge an e-reader, which has a highly energy-efficient screen."  E-ink displays are not backlit.  In fact, they're designed not to be backlit so as to reduce eyestrain.  In other words, the "light on before bed" applies even to the high-efficiency display.

Which brings me to what I think is the fundamental myopia of this type of analog-digital comparison: we're not talking about commensurable things.  I've said this in so many different ways before, but let me be clear.  A digital text is of a different kind.  Digital objects (files, web environments, self-perpetuating algorithms, etc.) are a different kind of thing, one which challenges what it is we mean by a thing when we use that word.  My suspicion is that in popular discourse, things remain woefully concrete, much to the detriment of those of us (i.e. nearly everyone) who must negotiate the veil between our analog and digital pasts and our analog and digital futures.  What this means for the present discussion is the false (and all too common) assumption of the null impact of the digital text itself, the so-called e-book, when, in fact, an elaborate, expensive, and fragile technological infrastructure is required merely to make digital objects persist in a way the "book" takes for granted simply by virtue of being a physical object.  That environmental impact goes largely ignored, and it is the ignorant valorization of the "digital future" by the political and economic powers that be that blinds popular discourses to the very real problems that plague digital information itself (portability, backwards compatibility, access, etc.).

It is the very same ignorance that leads Goleman and Norris to conclude, "[a]ll in all, the most ecologically virtuous way to read a book starts by walking to your local library."  I wonder if they are even aware of what is happening to the coffee sho--I mean public libraries (both collegiate and municipal) whose stacks are being gutted in favor of a more services-oriented system where libraries function less as book warehouses and more as study spaces, access points, reference assistance, and so forth.  The "virtuous reader" may very well be surprised by what she finds in a public library even five years from now.  I wonder if she will be surpised to find that our libraries are in fact the vanguard of those who perpetuate the ignorance enumerated above and not bulwarks guarding the lingering presence of the past against the imagined dictates of the future.

[now that I've made my over-the-top, sweeping generalization]

It amazes me how often people are removed from these discussions: the people who staff libraries, the people who maintain servers (and server farms), the people who design access software and devices with the noblest of intentions, the people who write, and the people who read.  We've become so obsessed with objects that perhaps for awhile we should set objects aside and think about the impact on ourselves physically, emotionally, intellectually, and so forth.  After all, what are we doing this for if not for ourselves?