gramophone


Introduction

A Brief History of Print

The End of Books

Hypertext

What Is The Book?

  The Novel Is Dead

This Is Not Science Fiction

Monkeys & Typewriters

In Defense of The E-Book

Conclusion

References




The end of books?
The End of Books

          Despite the immeasurable impact of the printing press and, by extension, the book, on virtually every facet of human life in the Western world, its success did not go unchallenged.  By the late nineteenth century, developments in audiovisual technologies, such as film and the phonograph, were heralded as the harbinger of death for the book.

          In 1894, author Octave Uzanne and illustrator A. Ribar published a story entitled, “The End of Books”, in which the narrator declares that the gramophone will render the printed word obsolete.  All literary works and news items, the speaker predicts, will be freely available in the future via cheap, pocket-sized listening devices.  And what of libraries?  Well, they would continue to exist but in a modified form as “phonographoteques” where users could enjoy free and unfettered access to information stored on records.

         Sound familiar?  It should.  Much of what the narrator in Uzanne and Ribar’s story relates has come to pass in one form or another, and yet the book still exists though, according to some, not for much longer. 


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Tara Stephens
School of Library and Information Sciences