Book II, Part II

David M. Levy, Scrolling Forward, Part II

I was fascinated that reading didn’t become a silent activity until the 12th century. I find it just annoying when somebody reads aloud to themselves—I love being read to, but I would have gone crazy as an 11th century monk, I think.

What was with Levy’s very weak attempt at a biological connection on page 111? He says if our DNA carries “traces of our ancestors” perhaps that might explain why we have such a strong connection to books. If he’s going to explore it further, fine. If not, it only weakens his argument.

I’m not sure how I feel about the thought of future librarians as “enablers” (134) who exist to help others organize their private libraries. First of all, won’t there still be some need for organization of institutional documents? Cultural documents? (Yes.) Secondly, it just doesn’t sound like as much fun. It doesn’t involve introducing people to new things that they might not otherwise have found. It doesn’t build a feeling of community, though it would provide more intense one-on-one engagement. What are some other future scenarios we can envision? We can do better than this.

Let’s talk about the document some more. I thought we’d reached a pretty good definition with “talking things”(23), or things whose primary purpose is to talk for us, but Levy raises some more good questions on page 157. The electronic document—what is it? Is it just the computer file? Is it the file plus the computer? The file plus the computer plus the printer to make it tangible? These are good questions. I’m voting for just the file for the moment.

I enjoyed the philosophical bent of the last part of the book. I wasn’t expecting anything so deep from a book about documents and technology (personal prejudices?) but was glad that Levy put in some very personal, subjective thoughts. Our thinking about documents isn’t entirely rational, and some of what ties us to books is of course nostalgia, and sometimes a “sensitive” argument deserves just as much weight as an objective one.