Juan Villoro
In 1991, Umberto Eco gave a lecture at the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense under the suggestive title “The vegetable memory”. He recalled that the first forms of writing were mineral: stone friezes and clay tablets. The e-book also belongs to the mineral order since it depends on silicon screens. The paper played a leading role in the period when writing was done on vegetable supports. Contemporary culture comes from that time.
Will the new memory of the species depend on devices? The non-renounceable taste for posing dilemmas – the sea or the mountains, white wine or red wine, Messi or Cristiano – forces us to compare paper books with electronic downloads. They are complementary resources, but it amuses us that they compete.
At the beginning of life in common, the depositaries of collective memories were the elders who talked in the warmth of campfires. With the advent of the book, this collection was entrusted to libraries, which is why, in his lecture on November 23, 1991, Eco was able to say: “Today, books are our elders”.
Eco points out that the printed book was well invented; it does not admit improvements like the comb or the scissors. In this regard, Martín Caparrós comments that the staircase was also well-conceived but adds that he prefers an elevator to climb fourteen floors. The e-book can house an infinite catalog without space problems. A point in its favor.
What do you lose by going paperless? Smell, tactile contact, and the notion of relief are essential for a species that operates in the third dimension. Besides, the book is a thing, and by using it, underlining it, and keeping it, we turn it into a unique something.
In his book Non-things, the philosopher Byung-Chul Han points out that in the digital society, the user moves away from the utensils on which he used to leave his mark. What is decisive is not the hardware, the physical medium, but the mysterious software: “An e-book is not a thing, but information […] It is not, even if we have it, a possession, but an access”.
The most important thing about smartphones or the internet is not what is there but what can be there. Digital reading provokes an addiction that does not necessarily derive from the content but from a possible finding: the most relevant data is always the next one. When we lose our cell phone or are in limbo without connectivity, we feel a new anguish: we are missing what could be there.
Human attachment to things also causes disasters ranging from greedy possession to fetishism. For the avid collector, accumulation prevails over the singular value of each piece.
For centuries, detachment from material goods was the foundation of spirituality. Now, our experimental age confronts us with the reverse of that situation: attachment to non-things.
How serious is this? For the philosopher Han, losing the material relationship with objects puts freedom at risk: “Today, freedom of action is reduced to freedom of choice and consumption. The manually inactive man of the future will surrender to the ‘freedom of the fingertips’ […] The perfect domination is one in which all humans only play.” Believing himself to make decisions, the digital being submits to the proposals of applications and algorithms; his slavery does not derive from a violent imposition but from the illusion that he chooses something. His freedom is restricted to the variants of the digital menu.
Children often have a blanket, a toy, or a stuffed animal that gives them security and a sense of permanence in the face of the transience of day and night. Adults replace this dependence with key chains, talismans, a favorite pen, or lucky pants. Things impregnated with what their owners have been. The same thing happens with paper books. The time we spend with them endows them with meaning; the marks of use belong to the grammar of reading.
In The Little Prince, the fox says that men have stopped giving time to each other and asks the protagonist to tame him: “I am only a fox to you like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, we will need each other. You will be the only one in the world for me”.
To read on paper means to tame, to distinguish a specimen from the others, to humanize it. When a flower is subtracted from the garden, it must be cared for. “You are responsible for your rose,” concludes the fox.
This was originally published in Spanish on February 11, 2022, by Reforma.