The Persistent Allure of Paper

The demise of printed material has been predicted for years, but in this article in The Week, Nicholas Carr argues that it’s not going to happen soon. “Paper may be the single most versatile invention in history,” he says, “its use extending from the artistic to the bureaucratic to the hygienic.” The average American uses a quarter of a ton every year. We simply can’t live without it. Printed books are selling surprisingly well (2 billion printed this year), and magazine subscriptions, after declining precipitously, have stabilized. A lot of people still like the feel of hard copy, even while they flirt with digital products. What’s going on?

“Our eyes tell us that the words and pictures on a screen are pretty much identical to the words and pictures on a piece of paper,” says Carr. “But our eyes lie. What we’re learning now is that reading is a bodily activity. We take in information the way we experience the world – as much with our sense of touch as with our sense of sight. Some scientists believe that our brain actually interprets written letters and words as physical objects – a reflection of the fact that our minds evolved to perceive things, not symbols… The physical presence of the printed pages, and the ability to flip back and forth through them, turns out to be important to the mind’s ability to navigate written works, particularly lengthy and complicated ones. We quickly develop a mental map of the contents of a printed text, as if its argument or story were a voyage unfolding through space.”

This physical, tactile aspect of reading printed material must be why studies show that people who read it have a more immersive experience and better comprehension than those who read electronic material. 

But what about all the advantages of digital publications? Convenience. Animations. Audio and video. Interactive features. Access to world news. Constant updates. Links to related material. Searchability. All very seductive – and yet print endures. “They seem to be different things,” concludes Carr, “suited to different kinds of reading and providing different sorts of aesthetic and intellectual experiences. Some readers may continue to prefer print, others may develop a particular taste for the digital, and still others may happily switch back and forth between the two.”

“No, Paper Isn’t Dead” by Nicholas Carr in The Week, October 18, 2013 (p. 40-41), excerpted from Nautilus at www.nautil.us 

From the Marshall Memo #513