Incendiary material

I was thinking about classic science fiction dystopias recently. Although there are a few loons way out there beyond the fringes of reason who think book-burning's a good idea, I'm thankful that Fahrenheit 451 hasn't yet come to pass here Newport Pagnell. With all the books on my shelves, I'd be toast in next to no time. My partner's dark mutterings about my inability to part with any book I have any affection for and the resulting lack of shelf space in the house just confirm it: I'm a habitual bibliophile, harbouring an anti-social stockpile of incendiary material.

If technology allowed, I wouldn't actually mind getting rid of some books though - at least in their current form. I'm quite excited about the development of the e-book. Existing versions are expensive and limited, but it's an idea which has real potential, if/when the technology is developed. Imagine a robust, relatively cheap e-book, which used minimal power (the use of digital paper would help with this, as well as cutting down eye-strain).

Imagine publishers getting significantly sized catalogues on line in downloadable form. The price of print runs for books sold is taken out of the cost of book production - not to mention the lost opportunity costs a publisher is saddled with every time a print run doesn't sell as well as predicted and gets pulped or remaindered. Book stores are expensive to run - there goes another cost. The cost of moving things around is gone. And the financial risks of publishing are reduced when you don't have to produce and sell vast numbers of physical objects. In such a world, small-scale publishing and self-publishing could flourish.

There are people who think this would be dreadful - the people who love books as physical objects, the collectors of hand-tooled leather bound collector's editions. Sometimes books can be beautiful objects, I agree, but the most wonderful thing about books for me is their capacity to transmit knowledge, experiences, sensations and ideas. And to transmit those things effectively, they need to be reproducible and accessible. The format really doesn't matter that much. I don't know how the e-book thing will develop, but I think it would be marvellous if it turned out to be the next step in the democratising written knowledge.

Gorgeously illuminated vellum manuscripts are things of great beauty, but they were written by and for a priestly elite - too expensive and precious for the commoner. The really exciting developments in the world of literacy have been the ones which have made books available to nearly all. Printing - especially in the West, where our alphabetical writing systems have proved ideal for print - has been the big one. Advances in the technology have thrown huge areas of human knowledge and experience open to anyone able to master functional literacy. Maybe the virtual book will be the next leap forward in this process - the 21st century's equivalent of the paperback.

And if it is, then domestic harmony will be restored this home at least, once it's possible to fit the contents of all my books onto a small device like a memory stick. That's the Utopian vision - books disappearing not because of crazed book burners, but simply because because a small library takes up next to no physical space.