0:00:02 > 0:00:05Hello, children. I hope you're ready for the picture book.
0:00:15 > 0:00:20In Norfolk, the Dersingham mobile library is on the move.
0:00:20 > 0:00:23Every month, Andrew Stride
0:00:23 > 0:00:27makes the 20-mile circuit via Wolferton, Sandringham
0:00:27 > 0:00:30and Bawsey, with 2,000 books on board,
0:00:30 > 0:00:32for his small but discerning clientele.
0:00:41 > 0:00:47The library is one of those special places where people meet books. Physical books, that is.
0:00:47 > 0:00:52The sort that sit on shelves waiting patiently to be found.
0:00:52 > 0:00:56But even in Dersingham, things are changing.
0:00:56 > 0:01:02A guy came on about nine months ago and he asked me
0:01:02 > 0:01:06if he could have instructions to download free e-books
0:01:06 > 0:01:09from the library system. He's about 85, I think he is.
0:01:09 > 0:01:14I gave him the instructions. I haven't seen him since.
0:01:19 > 0:01:21It was a wolf. Where's the wolf?
0:01:21 > 0:01:25- Shall we make him bigger?- Yes.
0:01:25 > 0:01:27This is the new screen age,
0:01:27 > 0:01:31in which the app replaces the child's ABC,
0:01:31 > 0:01:37and e-readers put e-books into the hands of millions.
0:01:45 > 0:01:48When you can carry around a tower of books
0:01:48 > 0:01:50on a device the size of a paperback,
0:01:50 > 0:01:53you can't help wondering
0:01:53 > 0:01:58what future is there for the books made of paper and ink?
0:02:04 > 0:02:08There will always be people who fetishise printed books
0:02:08 > 0:02:12and insist that it's a superior experience to flip through printed pages,
0:02:12 > 0:02:15just as there are people who insist that LPs sound better than CDs.
0:02:15 > 0:02:18But that doesn't make it so.
0:02:18 > 0:02:21The essence of a book is not that it's ink on paper,
0:02:21 > 0:02:25it's that it's a mechanism for transmitting ideas,
0:02:25 > 0:02:29and so, if you get hung up on the object, you sort of can't go forward.
0:02:32 > 0:02:39Disappear...is an excessively powerful word for what's going to happen.
0:02:39 > 0:02:42But I do think that ten years from now,
0:02:42 > 0:02:46when you walk on the aeroplane and everybody's reading,
0:02:46 > 0:02:48out of 200 people on the plane,
0:02:48 > 0:02:52there'll be four people who are reading a printed book.
0:02:56 > 0:03:00You hear a lot of talk these days about the book of the future.
0:03:00 > 0:03:03But what about a future without books -
0:03:03 > 0:03:06could that really happen?
0:03:06 > 0:03:10Will the page clicker replace the page turner?
0:03:10 > 0:03:12Will libraries migrate to the internet?
0:03:12 > 0:03:16Bookshops disappear?
0:03:16 > 0:03:19And physical books become as outmoded as LPs?
0:03:21 > 0:03:26Is this the final chapter in our long love affair with the book?
0:04:01 > 0:04:04Do you remember what it felt like to do this?
0:04:07 > 0:04:10NEEDLE CRACKLES
0:04:10 > 0:04:14MUSIC: "The Man Who Sold The World" by David Bowie
0:04:14 > 0:04:16SHUTTER CLICKS
0:04:16 > 0:04:18And this?
0:04:18 > 0:04:19And what about this?
0:04:19 > 0:04:22And this?
0:04:22 > 0:04:25# We passed upon... #
0:04:25 > 0:04:29Technology expands the mind but shrinks the world,
0:04:29 > 0:04:34making things that were once pleasurably different more or less the same.
0:04:34 > 0:04:36Get the picture?
0:04:36 > 0:04:40Well, now it looks as if the world is going to shrink still more
0:04:40 > 0:04:43when books go digital.
0:04:46 > 0:04:50A dozen little rites and rituals peculiar to book reading
0:04:50 > 0:04:55are going to be consigned to the dustbin of history.
0:05:05 > 0:05:08Make no mistake -
0:05:08 > 0:05:12this is the most profound revolution in the book business
0:05:12 > 0:05:18since Johannes Gutenberg started flogging printed Bibles in 1455.
0:05:18 > 0:05:20In the 500 years since Gutenberg,
0:05:20 > 0:05:23our relationship with books has deepened -
0:05:23 > 0:05:26they've become woven into the very fabric of our lives,
0:05:26 > 0:05:29reassuring, familiar, taken for granted.
0:05:29 > 0:05:31Until now.
0:05:31 > 0:05:34Those of you who've seen my book,
0:05:34 > 0:05:37whatever you make think of its contents,
0:05:37 > 0:05:42will probably agree that it is a beautiful object.
0:05:42 > 0:05:44And if the physical book,
0:05:44 > 0:05:45as we've come to call it,
0:05:45 > 0:05:47is to resist the challenge of the e-book,
0:05:47 > 0:05:51it has to look like something worth buying and worth keeping.
0:05:51 > 0:05:54APPLAUSE
0:05:59 > 0:06:01So where did our passionate
0:06:01 > 0:06:05and enduring love affair with books begin?
0:06:05 > 0:06:08To find the answer, I've popped into the library.
0:06:08 > 0:06:10Not any old library, mind you -
0:06:10 > 0:06:13I was visiting the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
0:06:13 > 0:06:16I was there to see some of the library's treasures
0:06:16 > 0:06:19and to hear how books first came to our lives.
0:06:21 > 0:06:26As Richard Ovenden, Keeper of the Special Collection, explained,
0:06:26 > 0:06:28before the book came the roll.
0:06:28 > 0:06:32This one, running twice the length of a long table,
0:06:32 > 0:06:38contains just one of the 24 books from Homer's epic poem, The Iliad.
0:06:38 > 0:06:41Not exactly something you could just dip into.
0:06:41 > 0:06:45You would have read it very much like this.
0:06:45 > 0:06:48Rolling one side out
0:06:48 > 0:06:54and picking up the text in the other side as you read through it.
0:06:54 > 0:06:56- That's called scrolling, is it? - Yeah, absolutely.
0:06:56 > 0:07:02And, of course, we've kept that terminology through the centuries
0:07:02 > 0:07:05and we've used it in the microfilm era,
0:07:05 > 0:07:07and that's been now translated into the digital world.
0:07:07 > 0:07:11The interesting thing that we find is that, as the first millennium
0:07:11 > 0:07:15moves forward, that there is this move
0:07:15 > 0:07:19from the scroll to what we now call the book,
0:07:19 > 0:07:21or the Latin word for it is codex.
0:07:21 > 0:07:25And the interesting thing is it happens much more readily
0:07:25 > 0:07:29in the Christian communities and with Christian texts
0:07:29 > 0:07:31than it does in the non-Christian.
0:07:31 > 0:07:37What we have here is one of the earliest Latin books
0:07:37 > 0:07:40to survive in England.
0:07:40 > 0:07:43This is a text of Eusebius' Chronicles
0:07:43 > 0:07:48that survives from the 5th century AD - 1,500 or 1,600 years old.
0:07:48 > 0:07:50It's in incredible condition.
0:07:50 > 0:07:55It's been kept together by the codex form very well.
0:07:55 > 0:07:58Despite it's great, great age,
0:07:58 > 0:08:01you can see how the technology works, you can move through the text.
0:08:01 > 0:08:03I can hear it as well, I can hear the crackle.
0:08:03 > 0:08:06The sound is wonderful, it's fabulous,
0:08:06 > 0:08:11and you think that somebody reading this book in the 5th century
0:08:11 > 0:08:13in southern Italy probably would have heard the same crackle.
0:08:13 > 0:08:15As I look at this,
0:08:15 > 0:08:18it's very recognisably a book.
0:08:18 > 0:08:21If I took this and showed it to anyone, they'd say, "That's a book."
0:08:21 > 0:08:25This could be 50 years old, 30 years old. It's actually 1,500 years old.
0:08:25 > 0:08:31So this design, both form and function,
0:08:31 > 0:08:34obviously having worked...worked for a very, very long time.
0:08:34 > 0:08:36It's successful technology.
0:08:36 > 0:08:42So the codex form begins to become dominate, because it works.
0:08:42 > 0:08:45It's very convenient to move between different parts of a text,
0:08:45 > 0:08:49much more rapidly than you can with the action of scrolling.
0:08:49 > 0:08:52It's fascinating what you said,
0:08:52 > 0:08:54because in an incredibly short time,
0:08:54 > 0:08:58people are saying, "Will be have these in 100 years' time?"
0:08:58 > 0:09:02And yet there's so much about this object, the feel of it,
0:09:02 > 0:09:05the touch of it, the smell of it,
0:09:05 > 0:09:10which immediately represents something to us,
0:09:10 > 0:09:12in terms of our memory.
0:09:12 > 0:09:15Books are alive with the meanings of their makers.
0:09:15 > 0:09:20And you can tell so much about the text itself,
0:09:20 > 0:09:23but why it was written, who it was written for,
0:09:23 > 0:09:25how it was meant to be understood,
0:09:25 > 0:09:27from the form.
0:09:27 > 0:09:33And that's something which is much harder to manage in a digital world.
0:09:35 > 0:09:41The history of the book is a story of incremental technological advances -
0:09:41 > 0:09:45most dramatically of all, from handwritten to printed books,
0:09:45 > 0:09:46a revolutionary innovation
0:09:46 > 0:09:50introduced into this country by William Caxton.
0:09:50 > 0:09:52Tell us what this is.
0:09:52 > 0:09:55This is the first book printed in the English language,
0:09:55 > 0:09:56which was printed by William Caxton,
0:09:56 > 0:10:02and he's using a typeface that is designed
0:10:02 > 0:10:06to mimic the handwritten manuscripts of the same period.
0:10:06 > 0:10:08That we can see here.
0:10:08 > 0:10:12You can see the similarities in the letter forms in both,
0:10:12 > 0:10:17and because the form of this book is so convincingly similar
0:10:17 > 0:10:21to the manuscript that everyone was familiar with
0:10:21 > 0:10:24is that he has to insert a preface at the start of the book
0:10:24 > 0:10:27to make it absolutely clear that this was printed,
0:10:27 > 0:10:30this was produced by this new technology called printing,
0:10:30 > 0:10:34and it is not the same as the manuscript era,
0:10:34 > 0:10:36and that every copy is the same.
0:10:40 > 0:10:46Therefore I have practised and learned at my great charge and dispense
0:10:46 > 0:10:49to ordain this said book in print
0:10:49 > 0:10:52and it not written with pen and ink, as other books have been.
0:10:52 > 0:10:55All the books of this story thus emprinted
0:10:55 > 0:10:57as you see here
0:10:57 > 0:11:01were begun in one day and also finished in one day.
0:11:01 > 0:11:04William Caxton.
0:11:07 > 0:11:10In the centuries after Gutenberg and Caxton,
0:11:10 > 0:11:12the book business quickly evolved
0:11:12 > 0:11:15to become one of the first truly modern manufacturing processes.
0:11:17 > 0:11:22More and more books were produced more and more cheaply,
0:11:22 > 0:11:27and the radical ideas they carried were spread ever more widely.
0:11:28 > 0:11:32Finally, the mechanisation of printing
0:11:32 > 0:11:35and the literacy that books had helped bring about
0:11:35 > 0:11:40combined to create the mass-market book business that we know today.
0:11:43 > 0:11:47But books have done far more than create a business.
0:11:47 > 0:11:49They've helped to shape our world.
0:11:49 > 0:11:54We made the books, and then the books made us.
0:11:54 > 0:11:59Just ask Her Majesty the Queen,
0:11:59 > 0:12:02as imagined by Alan Bennett in his recent bestseller,
0:12:02 > 0:12:04The Uncommon Reader.
0:12:04 > 0:12:05If you don't know the book,
0:12:05 > 0:12:09it's the Queen, by accident,
0:12:09 > 0:12:12strays into a mobile library,
0:12:12 > 0:12:16which she finds parked at the back of Buckingham Palace,
0:12:16 > 0:12:18and out of politeness, really,
0:12:18 > 0:12:22she takes out a book and she gradually
0:12:22 > 0:12:26begins to read, and as she reads,
0:12:26 > 0:12:29her whole attitude to life changes.
0:12:30 > 0:12:35"The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference.
0:12:35 > 0:12:39"There was something lofty about literature.
0:12:39 > 0:12:42"Books did not care who was reading them
0:12:42 > 0:12:44"or whether one read them or not.
0:12:44 > 0:12:47"All readers were equal, herself included.
0:12:47 > 0:12:54"Literature, she thought, is a Commonwealth, letters a Republic.
0:12:54 > 0:12:58"Once she got into her stride, it ceased to seem strange to her
0:12:58 > 0:12:59"that she wanted to read,
0:12:59 > 0:13:03"and books, to which she had taken so cautiously,
0:13:03 > 0:13:06"gradually came to be her element."
0:13:06 > 0:13:08APPLAUSE
0:13:18 > 0:13:23But for all their links to the high-flown and the abstract,
0:13:23 > 0:13:27there's something about books that remains reassuringly down-to-earth.
0:13:27 > 0:13:31They've never lost their connection to the physical world from which they sprung.
0:13:34 > 0:13:37When you see the industrial alchemy
0:13:37 > 0:13:41that turns trees into paper, for example,
0:13:41 > 0:13:44you begin to appreciate the sheer scale of operations that are required
0:13:44 > 0:13:47to put physical books into the hands of readers.
0:13:49 > 0:13:53MACHINE WHIRRS LOUDLY
0:14:06 > 0:14:09MACHINE DROWNS OUT SPEECH
0:14:09 > 0:14:13So books are inescapable, physical objects.
0:14:13 > 0:14:17But they're also organic, just like their readers.
0:14:17 > 0:14:19They might not live and breathe as we do,
0:14:19 > 0:14:22but they can certainly smell like us.
0:14:27 > 0:14:32Take a deep breath and meet someone with a nose for a good book.
0:14:51 > 0:14:55- Is this what you do for a living, Rachel, smelling books?- Um, yes.
0:14:55 > 0:14:59'Rachel Morrison's official job is as a librarian
0:14:59 > 0:15:02'at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
0:15:02 > 0:15:04'But she spends much of her time
0:15:04 > 0:15:10'smelling the books in the MoMA library, all 300,000 of them,
0:15:10 > 0:15:14'and carefully noting the olfactory essence of each.'
0:15:16 > 0:15:21"1967-'68, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Reports.
0:15:21 > 0:15:24"Smoky wool.
0:15:24 > 0:15:28"1968, Directory Of Fellows. Sweet flowers.
0:15:28 > 0:15:31"1994, The Order Of Things.
0:15:31 > 0:15:34"Burnt tortilla.
0:15:34 > 0:15:38"1951, Report. Perfume paper.
0:15:38 > 0:15:43"1977, Two Philosophical Experiments.
0:15:43 > 0:15:46"A hug with an elderly relative."
0:15:46 > 0:15:48Where did that come from?
0:15:48 > 0:15:52Um, well, when I hug my grandparents, they're usually wearing wool,
0:15:52 > 0:15:56and my grandfather smokes, so I think it had this, like,
0:15:56 > 0:16:02woolly, smoky smell, the way that smoke sort of sticks to wool.
0:16:06 > 0:16:09"Cigars.
0:16:09 > 0:16:13"Moss. Woody and wet.
0:16:14 > 0:16:17"Campfire.
0:16:17 > 0:16:19"Vacuum cleaner.
0:16:19 > 0:16:22"Silly Putty.
0:16:22 > 0:16:24"Play-Doh.
0:16:24 > 0:16:25"Campfire..."
0:16:25 > 0:16:30So do you think we actually really will miss the smell of books?
0:16:30 > 0:16:35I think people will. I know that I will and that I do miss the smell.
0:16:35 > 0:16:40There's something intimate about having a smell of a book,
0:16:40 > 0:16:44and when you're reading something off a screen,
0:16:44 > 0:16:47there's no intimacy.
0:16:47 > 0:16:51Can you imagine, though... You know what's going to happen -
0:16:51 > 0:16:54some smart person will think, "I've got all that right.
0:16:54 > 0:16:55"Now I have to have to have a smell.
0:16:55 > 0:16:57And they're going to... With every book you get,
0:16:57 > 0:17:01there's probably going to be a special customised smell.
0:17:01 > 0:17:05- That would be interesting. - Yeah, it'll be a special new app.
0:17:05 > 0:17:08- Yeah.- You can have a smell app. - Yeah, yeah.
0:17:10 > 0:17:13Ah, yes - the "app".
0:17:13 > 0:17:17One of those bland little words, like "tweet" or "blog" or "search"
0:17:17 > 0:17:21that are quietly changing our world.
0:17:21 > 0:17:25If you're wondering what could ever replace those wonderful
0:17:25 > 0:17:28smelly old books, here's part of the answer.
0:17:28 > 0:17:31The Elements, once a glossy coffee-table book,
0:17:31 > 0:17:36now transformed into a content-rich, multimedia,
0:17:36 > 0:17:40fully-interactive book app.
0:17:40 > 0:17:42Since its launch 18 months ago,
0:17:42 > 0:17:46more than a 250,000 copies of The Elements have been sold.
0:17:46 > 0:17:48There's nothing to smell here.
0:17:48 > 0:17:53Except the sweet smell of success.
0:17:53 > 0:17:56The Elements was produced by Touch Press,
0:17:56 > 0:18:01set up by former TV producer Max Whitby and Theo Gray,
0:18:01 > 0:18:04a scientist and science writer.
0:18:04 > 0:18:08Here they are in a teleconference
0:18:08 > 0:18:12with writer Simon Winchester, discussing a new app, Skulls.
0:18:12 > 0:18:15..will be spinning slowly to give you a visual prompt.
0:18:15 > 0:18:19The photos of the skulls are fully interactive.
0:18:19 > 0:18:23Landscape we see more as the coffee-table reading mode
0:18:23 > 0:18:25for the app, and the portrait is the book text reading mode.
0:18:25 > 0:18:30- (OVER COMPUTER)- I must say I'm enormously impressed
0:18:30 > 0:18:34and pleased with it. There are so many choices,
0:18:34 > 0:18:39and I feel somewhat all at sea but at the same time rather excited
0:18:39 > 0:18:42and stimulated by it.
0:18:42 > 0:18:45We are absolutely publishers, yeah. We think of ourselves as publishers
0:18:45 > 0:18:46first and foremost.
0:18:46 > 0:18:50We happen to use software as the kind of ink we print with,
0:18:50 > 0:18:55but we are making books written by authors with a story to tell,
0:18:55 > 0:18:57and I think our electronic books are very much
0:18:57 > 0:19:01beautiful, leather-bound, carefully printed books.
0:19:01 > 0:19:05The Elements didn't start as a blank sheet of paper -
0:19:05 > 0:19:08there was already a successful physical book -
0:19:08 > 0:19:14but for its author, this had always lacked a certain...magic.
0:19:14 > 0:19:20What I thought is suppose Harry Potter had this book - it would be a much better book,
0:19:20 > 0:19:23because if he got it out of the Hogwarts library and opened it up,
0:19:23 > 0:19:26these objects would pop up off the page
0:19:26 > 0:19:29and they would turn or he could look at...
0:19:29 > 0:19:32They would somehow be much more physical, much more present,
0:19:32 > 0:19:35than they are in the print form.
0:19:35 > 0:19:38And one of the design goals for The Elements was to see,
0:19:38 > 0:19:41"How close can we come to the Harry Potter version of this book?"
0:19:41 > 0:19:44When you're trying to imagine the new kinds of books
0:19:44 > 0:19:50that go onto these devices, you need to think what the device can do
0:19:50 > 0:19:53that really goes beyond the printed page.
0:19:55 > 0:19:59VOICE FROM DEVICE: 'Unreal City
0:19:59 > 0:20:02'Under the brown fog of a winter dawn
0:20:02 > 0:20:06'A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many
0:20:06 > 0:20:10'I had not thought death had undone so many...'
0:20:10 > 0:20:15There will always be people who fetishise printed books,
0:20:15 > 0:20:19insist it's a superior experience to flip through printed pages,
0:20:19 > 0:20:22just as there are people who insist that LPs sound better than CDs,
0:20:22 > 0:20:24but that doesn't make it so.
0:20:24 > 0:20:27It's kind of annoying to have to hold a book open,
0:20:27 > 0:20:31and if you slip, the pages flip, and if you're trying to read in bed,
0:20:31 > 0:20:34lying on your side, it's very stressful,
0:20:34 > 0:20:37and you might become attached to it in the same way
0:20:37 > 0:20:42that you become attached to the scratchy, noisy sound of an LP,
0:20:42 > 0:20:44but for the most part, most people,
0:20:44 > 0:20:47when given what is objectively speaking
0:20:47 > 0:20:51a better reading experience, you'll get over it.
0:21:00 > 0:21:02For the traditional book business,
0:21:02 > 0:21:04"getting over it" is proving difficult.
0:21:04 > 0:21:09An enormous spanner has been tossed into some very complex works.
0:21:09 > 0:21:13The physicality of books, the fact that, till now,
0:21:13 > 0:21:17they've had to be manufactured, warehoused, distributed
0:21:17 > 0:21:19and sold over the counter
0:21:19 > 0:21:22has shaped the publishing industry.
0:21:23 > 0:21:27The costly infrastructure, from the printing plants
0:21:27 > 0:21:29to distribution centres like this one,
0:21:29 > 0:21:33the tangled economics, from authors' advances and royalty payments
0:21:33 > 0:21:37to the sale or return of books from book shops.
0:21:37 > 0:21:39Even, you might argue,
0:21:39 > 0:21:41the philosophy of the book business itself
0:21:41 > 0:21:44as a cultural as well as commercial enterprise.
0:21:44 > 0:21:49All of these can be traced back to the fact that books are things.
0:21:49 > 0:21:53But the book has been dematerialised and, with it,
0:21:53 > 0:21:58most of the assumptions upon which the book business was founded.
0:21:59 > 0:22:04Publishers are really built around one fundamental capability,
0:22:04 > 0:22:08which is their ability to put books on book store shelves.
0:22:08 > 0:22:12Everything revolves around the physical entity of the book,
0:22:12 > 0:22:15rather than what's in the book,
0:22:15 > 0:22:19in the way that most of the publishing business is organised.
0:22:19 > 0:22:22They are perfectly all right putting a memoir, travel book, cook book,
0:22:22 > 0:22:25a piece of fiction all in the same box.
0:22:25 > 0:22:28Go to the same place, and when it got to that place,
0:22:28 > 0:22:31the person at the other end would put it on the right shelf,
0:22:31 > 0:22:33so that the consumer could find it.
0:22:33 > 0:22:37Given all this, it's not surprising that the branch of the book business
0:22:37 > 0:22:42that's been shaken by the chilliest winds has been the book shop,
0:22:42 > 0:22:46from the smallest local independent to the mightiest chain.
0:22:46 > 0:22:50Borders, which once boasted 1,200 stores worldwide,
0:22:50 > 0:22:54closed the last of them just a few months ago.
0:22:54 > 0:22:58Five years from now, if a book sells a lot of copies,
0:22:58 > 0:23:02the chances are overwhelming that it will sell most of them online.
0:23:02 > 0:23:04Online can be print or digital -
0:23:04 > 0:23:06it doesn't mean they all have to be e-books -
0:23:06 > 0:23:10but that shift from purchasing in stores,
0:23:10 > 0:23:13of which there are thousands that need to be covered,
0:23:13 > 0:23:17to purchasing online, at which there are...
0:23:17 > 0:23:23you know, a dozen touch points that basically get you to everything,
0:23:23 > 0:23:25is the huge change in the industry
0:23:25 > 0:23:28and the big challenge to the biggest publishers.
0:23:28 > 0:23:32I don't mean to suggest there will be no book stores ten years from now.
0:23:32 > 0:23:37There'll be some book stores, but it won't be enough book stores to build a business on.
0:23:37 > 0:23:41It will be an ancillary part of the market, not the core of the market,
0:23:41 > 0:23:43and that's all part of what drives the fear.
0:23:45 > 0:23:50So here they are, then - representatives of what, until about five minutes ago,
0:23:50 > 0:23:53was the book business.
0:23:53 > 0:23:56A publisher, Gail Rebuck of Random House,
0:23:56 > 0:23:57an agent, Ed Victor,
0:23:57 > 0:24:02and a writer, Ewan Morrison.
0:24:02 > 0:24:06These are the people of the book in their natural habitat,
0:24:06 > 0:24:10thinking aloud about an uncertain future.
0:24:10 > 0:24:11We have to change. How can we not?
0:24:11 > 0:24:15I changed very early, because I represented
0:24:15 > 0:24:17the late, great Douglas Adams,
0:24:17 > 0:24:20who was talking about this in the 1980s.
0:24:20 > 0:24:24He would say to me, "Ed, the business you're in is obsolete.
0:24:24 > 0:24:28"We're no longer going to manufacture physical books,
0:24:28 > 0:24:31"hunks of molecules," he said.
0:24:31 > 0:24:35The one thing that hasn't changed is the essence of what we do
0:24:35 > 0:24:38as publishers, and that's curators -
0:24:38 > 0:24:43it's selecting, it's choosing the books we want to publish,
0:24:43 > 0:24:48it's the editor working in close collaboration with the author,
0:24:48 > 0:24:51shaping the book, developing the book and then, ultimately,
0:24:51 > 0:24:54bringing it to its public.
0:24:54 > 0:24:58We don't really mind how we deliver books, in whatever form.
0:24:58 > 0:25:01What is a book really? Is it its body or its soul?
0:25:01 > 0:25:04We're in the business of the soul of books.
0:25:04 > 0:25:10But what happens when a book's soul is transformed into a data stream?
0:25:12 > 0:25:16Digitised, downloadable and never more than a click away
0:25:16 > 0:25:18from the infinite possibility of the internet?
0:25:18 > 0:25:21It's almost at the point where we can't really talk
0:25:21 > 0:25:24about books any more as a separate entity, because, really,
0:25:24 > 0:25:29what is a book? What is a piece of music? It's an MP4,
0:25:29 > 0:25:33or you can upload it on different formats in about 10 to 15 seconds.
0:25:33 > 0:25:35As soon as books go digital, they become
0:25:35 > 0:25:37another piece of digital content.
0:25:37 > 0:25:42Therefore, if we lose that respect and reverence
0:25:42 > 0:25:44for the book and the book just becomes like an MP4
0:25:44 > 0:25:47or a QuickTime movie, then that will be the end of the book, basically.
0:25:47 > 0:25:52Ultimately, I think the point is that if we get it right,
0:25:52 > 0:25:55and physical books remain a part of the market,
0:25:55 > 0:25:56and I haven't got a crystal ball -
0:25:56 > 0:26:01I don't know whether they'll be 50% of the market or 20% or whatever.
0:26:01 > 0:26:05But actually, the opportunity for getting more people to read books,
0:26:05 > 0:26:08if they're available both digitally, widely available
0:26:08 > 0:26:12and discoverable, and in physical form,
0:26:12 > 0:26:14I think it's very exciting.
0:26:14 > 0:26:17What concerns me is Generation Y, who are the same size as the baby boomers,
0:26:17 > 0:26:20they're really the next market, and Gen Y consume
0:26:20 > 0:26:24about 78% of all textual material already online.
0:26:24 > 0:26:26So I can't...
0:26:26 > 0:26:30You know, within a generation, it's going to be the same for books,
0:26:30 > 0:26:34I'm afraid. There's no way that you can instil in them the need to start using books
0:26:34 > 0:26:38if they've never had that experience.
0:26:38 > 0:26:42Along with concerns about how the book-reading public is changing
0:26:42 > 0:26:46are anxieties about powerful new players
0:26:46 > 0:26:48who've appeared in the book market.
0:26:48 > 0:26:51I think we're at a crucial juncture just now,
0:26:51 > 0:26:54where the publishers have to get together again,
0:26:54 > 0:26:56because there are forecasts going on in Silicon Valley just now
0:26:56 > 0:26:59about who the three main publishers are going to be in ten years' time.
0:26:59 > 0:27:02- Google, Amazon... - Google and Apple.
0:27:02 > 0:27:05- Amazon and Apple. - These are the three companies
0:27:05 > 0:27:08that are going to rule our industry. They do now.
0:27:08 > 0:27:11Amazon, Apple and Google are these monoliths,
0:27:11 > 0:27:15international monoliths, and we are, you know,
0:27:15 > 0:27:20we're not exactly tiny, but we're not big in the publishing industry,
0:27:20 > 0:27:22and what we're doing, what they rely on us to do,
0:27:22 > 0:27:25- is to provide them with content. And we do.- For free, as well.
0:27:25 > 0:27:28Well, the big issue for me is about discovery,
0:27:28 > 0:27:30because it's all very well... We might discover
0:27:30 > 0:27:32all these wonderful new writers,
0:27:32 > 0:27:36but how's the public meant to discover them? Because, actually,
0:27:36 > 0:27:41discovering online is a bit of a hit-and-miss affair.
0:27:41 > 0:27:44So book shops are absolutely essential to us.
0:27:44 > 0:27:48They are essential, you know, to the culture of this country.
0:27:48 > 0:27:50I mean, we are becoming a bit of a book desert. The independents
0:27:50 > 0:27:55who give a lot of the soul and the individuality to choice
0:27:55 > 0:28:00are being knocked off on literally a weekly basis.
0:28:00 > 0:28:02And with libraries closing,
0:28:02 > 0:28:05I think this point of discovery is a real issue.
0:28:08 > 0:28:09The spectre at this feast
0:28:09 > 0:28:13is what used to be called the record industry,
0:28:13 > 0:28:16brought to its knees by the side-effects of digitisation -
0:28:16 > 0:28:22piracy, file-sharing and the assumption among consumers
0:28:22 > 0:28:25that if it's digital, then it ought to be cheap
0:28:25 > 0:28:28or, preferably, free.
0:28:28 > 0:28:32I really think we should be fighting for a really strong copyright law.
0:28:32 > 0:28:36This is one of the reasons authors have to stick with publishers,
0:28:36 > 0:28:40- actually, and not run off. - And agents.- And agents, yes. Yes!
0:28:40 > 0:28:43- It's because...- We fight for you. - It's because there is a common battle
0:28:43 > 0:28:46against the draining away of copyright law
0:28:46 > 0:28:48and copyright protection.
0:28:48 > 0:28:50I think people should be paid for what they do.
0:28:50 > 0:28:54- It takes a year to write a book. - True.- It takes a year.
0:28:54 > 0:28:57- You're preaching to the converted. - Exactly, but I'm just really worried
0:28:57 > 0:29:01that we are all going to be out of a job in about ten years' time,
0:29:01 > 0:29:04so you can look at us as three coffins that are sitting here,
0:29:04 > 0:29:07and we've missed this great opportunity...
0:29:07 > 0:29:10I want to talk about William Goldman.
0:29:10 > 0:29:12William Goldman wrote a famous book
0:29:12 > 0:29:14called Adventures In The Screen Trade,
0:29:14 > 0:29:19but it could be any media trade, and he said, "The most important thing
0:29:19 > 0:29:22"to remember about Hollywood executives is this -
0:29:22 > 0:29:26"nobody knows anything. And just in case you didn't get that..."
0:29:26 > 0:29:29and he puts it in huge type... "Nobody knows anything."
0:29:29 > 0:29:33So I submit to all of you that we don't know anything.
0:29:36 > 0:29:39Maybe William Goldman was right, but that won't stop us
0:29:39 > 0:29:43trying to make sense of these strange days we're in,
0:29:43 > 0:29:44when, as Karl Marx put it,
0:29:44 > 0:29:50"All that was once solid seems to be melting into air."
0:30:00 > 0:30:06'Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story, for example, describes
0:30:06 > 0:30:11'a near future in which America has collapsed into political anarchy.
0:30:11 > 0:30:13'The Chinese are running the global economy,
0:30:13 > 0:30:17'and everyone is addicted to their apparats,
0:30:17 > 0:30:21'seductive mobile devices that plug them directly into the wired world,
0:30:21 > 0:30:28'trading 24/7 global connectivity in exchange for their privacy,
0:30:28 > 0:30:32'their individuality and, ultimately, their humanity.
0:30:32 > 0:30:38'Only hapless hero Lenny struggles to resist, thanks to his books.'
0:30:40 > 0:30:42"I celebrated my wall of books.
0:30:42 > 0:30:46"I counted the volumes on my 20-foot-long modernist bookshelf
0:30:46 > 0:30:51"to make sure none had been misplaced or used as kindling by my sub-tenant.
0:30:51 > 0:30:54" 'You're my sacred ones,' I told the books.
0:30:54 > 0:30:56" 'No-one but me still cares about you,
0:30:56 > 0:30:58" 'but I'm going to keep you with me for ever,
0:30:58 > 0:31:01" 'and one day, I'll make you important again.' "
0:31:05 > 0:31:10'Tracking down this prophet of the book-less future wasn't easy.
0:31:10 > 0:31:15'Gary was somewhere in upstate New York, working on a new novel,
0:31:15 > 0:31:17'far from the tweeting crowd.'
0:31:30 > 0:31:32HE KNOCKS ON DOOR
0:31:34 > 0:31:38- Gary, I presume.- I'm Gary, yeah. - And you're for sale.
0:31:38 > 0:31:41Well, actually, it's completely false.
0:31:41 > 0:31:43There's no honey for sale here.
0:31:46 > 0:31:47'100 years ago,
0:31:47 > 0:31:53'the novelist EM Forster challenged his readers to only connect.
0:31:53 > 0:31:57'The challenge these days, according to Gary, is only disconnect.'
0:31:59 > 0:32:03This place, to me, is the ultimate privilege.
0:32:03 > 0:32:08Because there is no broadband signal, there's the wood behind me,
0:32:08 > 0:32:11you know, that's technology where I am right now.
0:32:11 > 0:32:15And I pay for this quite a lot, not in terms of the rent,
0:32:15 > 0:32:17but in terms of being disengaged from society.
0:32:17 > 0:32:21It almost takes a kind of religious conviction to say no to it.
0:32:21 > 0:32:24Because everyone's at the party.
0:32:24 > 0:32:25You're sitting in this cabin...
0:32:25 > 0:32:28down there somewhere there's a big party,
0:32:28 > 0:32:30and everyone's screaming for your attention.
0:32:30 > 0:32:33And you're saying, "No, I'm going to stay here with my book."
0:32:33 > 0:32:36And I remember as a child, this was me as well.
0:32:36 > 0:32:39Everyone was saying, "Come on down, Gary, let's play,"
0:32:39 > 0:32:42and I'd say, "Hold on, I just want to finish this book."
0:32:42 > 0:32:44And that's what it's like now as well,
0:32:44 > 0:32:47except the party's everywhere, because the party's in your pocket.
0:32:47 > 0:32:52It's pinging and blinging and clinging and singing and dinging.
0:32:52 > 0:32:55It just wants you to say, "You know, I'm going to put this down,
0:32:55 > 0:33:00"because this letter from my cell phone provider is very interesting.
0:33:00 > 0:33:05"Save 49 on a new iPhone GS39 - that's pretty important."
0:33:07 > 0:33:11'He's an extreme case, as he'd be the first to admit.
0:33:11 > 0:33:16'As a child, growing up Jewish in the dying days of the Soviet Union,
0:33:16 > 0:33:20'books were more than just something you picked up to pass the time.'
0:33:20 > 0:33:23I grew up, obviously, in a household where books were...
0:33:23 > 0:33:26The most important thing that you could do with your life
0:33:26 > 0:33:30is just to read a book. My parents had a very clear idea that you start with Chekhov,
0:33:30 > 0:33:32then you move on to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky
0:33:32 > 0:33:34in your teens, you know, so...
0:33:36 > 0:33:40I remember my father going to a parents-teachers conference,
0:33:40 > 0:33:45and the teacher said, "We hear your son is reading Tolstoy,"
0:33:45 > 0:33:47and my father said, "No, he's just on Chekhov!"
0:33:47 > 0:33:51And I remember the first books I got as a five-year-old,
0:33:51 > 0:33:54four-year-old, five-year-old.
0:33:54 > 0:33:58They were... I mean, they were so beautiful.
0:33:58 > 0:34:01They were made out of cheap Soviet crap,
0:34:01 > 0:34:04but I remember buying masking tape
0:34:04 > 0:34:06so I could bind them up when they were falling apart.
0:34:06 > 0:34:09So the book itself... you treasured the object?
0:34:09 > 0:34:12I took them with me to America, you know,
0:34:12 > 0:34:15and continued to bind them up as they continued to fall apart.
0:34:15 > 0:34:18Their spines were made out of straw or I don't know what.
0:34:18 > 0:34:19But they meant so much.
0:34:19 > 0:34:22Books get older, you know -
0:34:22 > 0:34:24unlike text files, they yellow and fray.
0:34:26 > 0:34:29Books are... They stand against youth, in a sense.
0:34:29 > 0:34:34And we live in a culture where youth is the only thing that's important.
0:34:34 > 0:34:37So books remind us of mortality, in a sense,
0:34:37 > 0:34:42because they also get old and die, and the body also gets old and dies.
0:34:42 > 0:34:46So of course I'm scared for books.
0:34:46 > 0:34:50"What kind of freaked me out was that I saw Len reading a book.
0:34:50 > 0:34:53"No, it didn't smell, he uses Pine-Sol on them.
0:34:53 > 0:34:56"And I don't mean scanning a text like we did in Euro classics
0:34:56 > 0:35:00"with that Chatterhouse Of Parma, I mean seriously reading.
0:35:00 > 0:35:04"He had this ruler out and he was moving it down the page very slowly,
0:35:04 > 0:35:07"and just, like, whispering little things to himself,
0:35:07 > 0:35:10"like trying to understand every little part of it.
0:35:10 > 0:35:13"I was going to Ting my sister, but I was so embarrassed
0:35:13 > 0:35:17"I just stood there and watched him read, which lasted like half an hour,
0:35:17 > 0:35:21"and finally he put the book down, and I pretended like nothing happened.
0:35:21 > 0:35:22"And then I snuck a peek,
0:35:22 > 0:35:25"and it was that Russian guy Tolsoy he was reading.
0:35:25 > 0:35:28"I guess it figures, cos Lenny's parents are like from Russia.
0:35:28 > 0:35:34"But this Tolsoy was a 1,000 page-long book, not a stream,
0:35:34 > 0:35:37"and Lenny was like on page 930, like almost finished."
0:35:37 > 0:35:41One of the inciting incidents for this novel
0:35:41 > 0:35:44was that a television repair man came to my apartment,
0:35:44 > 0:35:47he was in his early 20s, and he said,
0:35:47 > 0:35:49"Oh, man, why do you have all these books?"
0:35:49 > 0:35:52He was disgusted by them. Truly disgusted.
0:35:52 > 0:35:55And then he looked at my television, which was maybe 25 inches long,
0:35:55 > 0:35:59and he said, "Such a small TV."
0:35:59 > 0:36:03I'm not against change, progress, I'm not against technology.
0:36:03 > 0:36:07But this happened so quickly that, in terms of maintaining
0:36:07 > 0:36:11one's humanity, remembering what it was like to be a human being,
0:36:11 > 0:36:14remembering all the analogue physical qualities that make us so,
0:36:14 > 0:36:17it just happened too fast for some of us.
0:36:19 > 0:36:21What do you have there?
0:36:23 > 0:36:24It's a book.
0:36:24 > 0:36:26Do you scroll down?
0:36:26 > 0:36:29No. I turn the page. It's a book.
0:36:29 > 0:36:31- Can you blog with it?- No.
0:36:31 > 0:36:34It's a book.
0:36:34 > 0:36:35Well, can it tweet?
0:36:35 > 0:36:37No.
0:36:38 > 0:36:42Can it text? Can it wi-fi? Does it need a password?
0:36:42 > 0:36:44No.
0:36:44 > 0:36:46- Can it do this? - ALARM BLARES
0:36:46 > 0:36:51No. It's a book.
0:36:55 > 0:36:58'For those at the forefront of the revolution,
0:36:58 > 0:37:01'mourning the passing of a physical book
0:37:01 > 0:37:04'seems self-indulgent and sentimental.
0:37:04 > 0:37:08'The future is already here. It's time to embrace its possibilities.'
0:37:11 > 0:37:13I think the future of the book as we know it
0:37:13 > 0:37:16really sort of goes into directions.
0:37:16 > 0:37:17There's a...
0:37:17 > 0:37:22In terms of the physical object, it's going to be an art object,
0:37:22 > 0:37:25it's going to be something that's very expensive and only for the rich.
0:37:25 > 0:37:28Most of us are going to get our information
0:37:28 > 0:37:29from electronic documents.
0:37:29 > 0:37:32I have no sentimentality about the physical book at all.
0:37:32 > 0:37:34And I grew up...
0:37:34 > 0:37:38My dad was in the business, I grew up in a house loaded with books.
0:37:38 > 0:37:41I still live in a house loaded with books, they're great furniture,
0:37:41 > 0:37:45I'm delighted to have them around, but I don't find them
0:37:45 > 0:37:48particularly useful for narrative text reading compared to the iPhone.
0:37:48 > 0:37:52The essence of a book is not that it's ink on paper,
0:37:52 > 0:37:56it's that it's a mechanism for transmitting ideas,
0:37:56 > 0:38:01and so if you get hung up on the object, you sort of can't go forward.
0:38:01 > 0:38:04But if you sort of grasp what books are really for,
0:38:04 > 0:38:07then you start to get excited about the different forms they can take.
0:38:07 > 0:38:11I don't understand the resistance to it.
0:38:11 > 0:38:17I mean, the value of having not just A book
0:38:17 > 0:38:23but all the books you want on your person all the time, I mean, how...
0:38:23 > 0:38:27what particular added value comes from the printed page
0:38:27 > 0:38:31that can substitute for that? I just don't see it.
0:38:34 > 0:38:37The first assumption to be overturned is that reading
0:38:37 > 0:38:40is a solitary activity, a private liaison
0:38:40 > 0:38:42between you and the writer,
0:38:42 > 0:38:44conducted between the covers of a book.
0:38:44 > 0:38:49Digital makes the private public.
0:38:49 > 0:38:53We all grew up thinking that reading was something we did by ourselves.
0:38:53 > 0:38:59But reading, really up until the mid-19th century, was something
0:38:59 > 0:39:01that people mostly did in groups.
0:39:01 > 0:39:06Really, silent reading by yourself is something that really has only
0:39:06 > 0:39:10come of age in the last, you know, 150 years or so.
0:39:10 > 0:39:15And so it's perfectly natural that we think that's the way to do it,
0:39:15 > 0:39:19but there are other ways, and I think that we're now realising that
0:39:19 > 0:39:23one of the fantastic things about putting books online,
0:39:23 > 0:39:25if you format them properly,
0:39:25 > 0:39:29is that readers can start to write notes in the margin.
0:39:29 > 0:39:32You and I could read a book together, you in London, me in New York,
0:39:32 > 0:39:34and we can engage in a conversation that's quite deep.
0:39:37 > 0:39:42Bookmarks, highlights and notes can already be shared online,
0:39:42 > 0:39:47and often are, whether you realise it or not.
0:39:47 > 0:39:52Every time you highlight a passage on your Kindle, for example,
0:39:52 > 0:39:56it's added automatically to Amazon's database of popular highlights.
0:39:56 > 0:40:02Though unlike Winston Smith in 1984, you are able to opt out.
0:40:02 > 0:40:07And every time you buy a book online,
0:40:07 > 0:40:10it adds more details to your digital profile.
0:40:10 > 0:40:13You've always been able to tell a lot about someone
0:40:13 > 0:40:15by browsing their bookshelves.
0:40:15 > 0:40:20Now online retailers can tell a lot about you by browsing yours.
0:40:20 > 0:40:26For writers, too, all this interconnectivity means big changes.
0:40:26 > 0:40:31So my sense is that, as we go forward, that the value of content
0:40:31 > 0:40:35is heading towards zero, and so the question remains,
0:40:35 > 0:40:37"So what are people going to pay for?"
0:40:37 > 0:40:41And our sense is that people will pay for context and community,
0:40:41 > 0:40:45they'll pay to know something about the text that they're reading
0:40:45 > 0:40:49or watching, or they will pay for community,
0:40:49 > 0:40:51they'll pay for the opportunity
0:40:51 > 0:40:55to see what other people are thinking about the same text.
0:40:55 > 0:40:59Right now, the way it works is I am a publisher.
0:40:59 > 0:41:03I give an advance to an author, they deliver a manuscript to me,
0:41:03 > 0:41:05they go away.
0:41:05 > 0:41:07Well, suppose we did it a little differently.
0:41:07 > 0:41:11Suppose the author starts to learn what musicians have learned,
0:41:11 > 0:41:15that they get paid to show up, and that in fact,
0:41:15 > 0:41:18they get an advance to some extent,
0:41:18 > 0:41:23but then people start subscribing to an author's work, and the author
0:41:23 > 0:41:27actually shows up on the pages, the author is part of the process,
0:41:27 > 0:41:30and people subscribe to this work as long as it's interesting to them.
0:41:32 > 0:41:35Digital visionaries see themselves as the natural successors
0:41:35 > 0:41:41of Gutenberg and Caxton, the masters of a disruptive technology.
0:41:42 > 0:41:44If you buy McLuhan's sort of thesis,
0:41:44 > 0:41:48which was that print changed everything for humanity,
0:41:48 > 0:41:51it gave rise to the Enlightenment, to our understanding
0:41:51 > 0:41:54of what an individual is, to capitalism, to the nation state,
0:41:54 > 0:41:57then none of those things would have happened if we hadn't had print.
0:41:57 > 0:42:03Well, arguably, digital technology is even a bigger,
0:42:03 > 0:42:05more profound invention than print.
0:42:05 > 0:42:08SHIP'S HORN BLARES
0:42:14 > 0:42:16'Marshall McLuhan.
0:42:16 > 0:42:20'Now, there's a name to conjure with in these digital days.'
0:42:22 > 0:42:24More than half a century ago,
0:42:24 > 0:42:27McLuhan argued that, just as the invention of print
0:42:27 > 0:42:31had changed the way we understand the world and our place in it,
0:42:31 > 0:42:34so the new electronic medium of television
0:42:34 > 0:42:38would change us in equally profound ways.
0:42:38 > 0:42:42According to McLuhan, the book was an extension of the eye,
0:42:42 > 0:42:47but television was an extension of our nervous systems.
0:42:53 > 0:42:56The distinction, he said, was critical, far more important
0:42:56 > 0:42:59than the actual content of the book or the television programme.
0:42:59 > 0:43:03The medium, as he put it, is the message.
0:43:05 > 0:43:09The TV viewer is being X-rayed at every moment.
0:43:09 > 0:43:12The light is coming through the screen at him
0:43:12 > 0:43:15and penetrating him completely, as in an X-ray.
0:43:15 > 0:43:20And people go inside texts, they get involved,
0:43:20 > 0:43:23and they go inside themselves. The electric age is one of X-ray.
0:43:29 > 0:43:32'According to McLuhan, print had fostered a visual culture,
0:43:32 > 0:43:35'by which he meant analytical, objective,
0:43:35 > 0:43:38'rational, individualistic.
0:43:42 > 0:43:47'Electronic media, he believed, create an oral culture,
0:43:47 > 0:43:52'emotional, subjective, irrational and collective.'
0:43:52 > 0:43:54When you surround people with electric information,
0:43:54 > 0:43:58the overload of information becomes fantastic.
0:44:02 > 0:44:05The only way in which people can conduct their lives
0:44:05 > 0:44:08is by recognising the structural patterns of that around them,
0:44:08 > 0:44:11instead of trying to classify information.
0:44:13 > 0:44:15'In the centenary of his birth,
0:44:15 > 0:44:18'as Gutenberg man morphs into digital man,
0:44:18 > 0:44:23'McLuhan's ideas, often obscure, sometimes contradictory,
0:44:23 > 0:44:26'suddenly seem to make more sense.
0:44:26 > 0:44:29'I've come to Vancouver to meet someone
0:44:29 > 0:44:34'who's made a close study of McLuhan for a new biography.
0:44:34 > 0:44:37'The biographer is writer and artist Douglas Copeland,
0:44:37 > 0:44:40'author of Generation X and a dozen other novels
0:44:40 > 0:44:44'that have successfully trawled the waters of the digital ocean.'
0:44:54 > 0:44:57This is someone who knows all about what goes into a book -
0:44:57 > 0:45:02and I don't just mean the writing of one.
0:45:02 > 0:45:04So, Douglas, you must know something about the physicality of books,
0:45:04 > 0:45:08because you have actually eaten a novel, you've chewed it.
0:45:08 > 0:45:13- That is your novel.- That is actually Generation X, my first novel.
0:45:13 > 0:45:18- What made you chew it?- Er, at the time, it was just sheer instinct.
0:45:18 > 0:45:24That was back about ten years ago, and at that point,
0:45:24 > 0:45:27I'd been writing novels for a decade.
0:45:27 > 0:45:29I'd also been using the internet for a decade
0:45:29 > 0:45:33and I honestly felt that my brain was changing.
0:45:33 > 0:45:36You take the book, you soak it in water
0:45:36 > 0:45:39and then you sit down and you watch television
0:45:39 > 0:45:41and while you're watching TV,
0:45:41 > 0:45:44you sort of chew the book up, you pulp it
0:45:44 > 0:45:47into these little, tiny pellets that end up being about that big per page,
0:45:47 > 0:45:51then you let the pellets dry for about four days
0:45:51 > 0:45:53and then watch television again and while you watch TV,
0:45:53 > 0:45:56you unravel the pellets,
0:45:56 > 0:46:00so they're about as chewed-up as you can get them
0:46:00 > 0:46:05and still have them be intact, and the ink, apparently -
0:46:05 > 0:46:08my doctor told me after the fact - is cyanidic,
0:46:08 > 0:46:12it's poison, so it's not a pleasant experience.
0:46:14 > 0:46:18Doug's offbeat biography of McLuhan was published last year,
0:46:18 > 0:46:23complete with MapQuest directions, Wikipedia entries
0:46:23 > 0:46:26and YouTube reviews, making him part of the new media age
0:46:26 > 0:46:30to which his insights already seemed to belong.
0:46:30 > 0:46:33If the medium is the message, then of course
0:46:33 > 0:46:36the medium of the book, the physical book,
0:46:36 > 0:46:39is a completely different message
0:46:39 > 0:46:42to the medium of the electronic book, isn't it?
0:46:42 > 0:46:43Oh, it's a completely different experience.
0:46:43 > 0:46:47In terms of the way you take in the book in your brain
0:46:47 > 0:46:52and your experience of the book, I had this phone call with my agent,
0:46:52 > 0:46:55Eric, he's in New York, and we were both reading the new -
0:46:55 > 0:46:58well, then-new - Keith Richards biography, and I said,
0:46:58 > 0:46:59"Well, how far along are you?"
0:46:59 > 0:47:02and he's like, "11%."
0:47:02 > 0:47:08And it was like, "Ooh!" Just one of those chilling moments that defines an era for you.
0:47:08 > 0:47:13I was on PAGE 20-something - I felt like a real loser, actually,
0:47:13 > 0:47:15for not having a percentage.
0:47:17 > 0:47:20For Doug, McLuhan provides a perspective
0:47:20 > 0:47:24from which to understand what's happening today.
0:47:24 > 0:47:28I'm really finding with McLuhan that everything he wrote
0:47:28 > 0:47:33that seemed crazy or opaque or scary or, "What the hell?"
0:47:33 > 0:47:39if you look at it now is chillingly prescient. He really got it right.
0:47:41 > 0:47:45There's this scientific law, it's called Hebb's law,
0:47:45 > 0:47:49which is that neurons that fire together wire together
0:47:49 > 0:47:52and that any technology you encounter, whether it's a book
0:47:52 > 0:47:58or a screen or, you know, hopscotch, if you do it a lot,
0:47:58 > 0:48:01your neurons are going to fire in a certain way
0:48:01 > 0:48:05and then your brain says, "Oh, let's build a strong connection there."
0:48:05 > 0:48:08And when he was saying that the medium is the message,
0:48:08 > 0:48:12what he was anticipating, whether poetically or unwittingly,
0:48:12 > 0:48:17is what we're now learning through neuroscience,
0:48:17 > 0:48:22which is that a medium does literally make you the message.
0:48:22 > 0:48:25One McLuhan quote - "First we shape our tools
0:48:25 > 0:48:27"and then our tools shape us" -
0:48:27 > 0:48:30it feels very, very true and very prescient
0:48:30 > 0:48:34about this world we're all inhabiting now, doesn't it?
0:48:34 > 0:48:36- The world of technology. - Oh, I think so.
0:48:36 > 0:48:39I think, to be honest, the human attention span
0:48:39 > 0:48:41is about the length of one Beatles song,
0:48:41 > 0:48:45and after doing two-and-a-half minutes of anything,
0:48:45 > 0:48:48your brain naturally wants to go do that or do something
0:48:48 > 0:48:51or if you're online, check for e-mail
0:48:51 > 0:48:56or all the million things we do online, and in a world of text only,
0:48:56 > 0:49:00in a world only with the book, you may have that instinct but you don't act on it.
0:49:00 > 0:49:05I think that, you know, life has sort of become a series of blips
0:49:05 > 0:49:08and beeps and sequentialised tasks -
0:49:08 > 0:49:10and I'm not going to put judgment about that,
0:49:10 > 0:49:13because it's what's happening, you can't change it one way or the other.
0:49:13 > 0:49:17Because of this reliance on technology,
0:49:17 > 0:49:22this increasing reliance on these machines, is the next step just,
0:49:22 > 0:49:25you know, stick the chip, you know, in your wrist,
0:49:25 > 0:49:27take it out of the computer
0:49:27 > 0:49:29and you won't need to bother any more sitting in front of the computer,
0:49:29 > 0:49:31you can have it with you all the time?
0:49:31 > 0:49:35McLuhan seemed to predict that that was what would happen,
0:49:35 > 0:49:38that our brain will be displaced.
0:49:38 > 0:49:41Technically, we've actually already done that,
0:49:41 > 0:49:43we've already inserted the chip.
0:49:43 > 0:49:48Basically, all the memories that you have occur on the screen
0:49:48 > 0:49:51and somewhere else in the database inside the cloud,
0:49:51 > 0:49:55so it's an artificial memory, but as you have no memories of your own,
0:49:55 > 0:49:58you effectively become artificial intelligence,
0:49:58 > 0:49:59and we've always been wondering,
0:49:59 > 0:50:02"When's AI going to really, really happen?"
0:50:02 > 0:50:03And I do think we have to think,
0:50:03 > 0:50:05it's actually already here, it's us,
0:50:05 > 0:50:07we're the artificial intelligence
0:50:07 > 0:50:09and we have become the medium and the message.
0:50:09 > 0:50:13It's not just the book that's under assault,
0:50:13 > 0:50:18I think that the seemingly doomed nature of the printed book on paper,
0:50:18 > 0:50:20it's the canary in the coal mine.
0:50:20 > 0:50:23I think there's something else being lost as well.
0:50:38 > 0:50:41MUSIC: "Are 'Friends' Electric?" by Gary Numan
0:50:49 > 0:50:53Marshall McLuhan was a bit of a cultural pessimist.
0:50:53 > 0:50:55He thought television was the enemy
0:50:55 > 0:50:58back when there were only a handful of channels
0:50:58 > 0:51:01transmitting in black and white.
0:51:01 > 0:51:03Maybe the digital champions are right -
0:51:03 > 0:51:06we project anxieties about the future
0:51:06 > 0:51:09onto whatever the latest technology happens to be.
0:51:09 > 0:51:14Televisions, microwave ovens, mobile phones and now e-books.
0:51:14 > 0:51:20A stone age McLuhan would probably have bitched about the invention of the wheel.
0:51:32 > 0:51:36I've come to San Francisco for an injection of West Coast optimism.
0:51:36 > 0:51:41I'm here to meet an entrepreneur and inventor who's made fortunes
0:51:41 > 0:51:46several times over from the internet boom and the digital revolution.
0:51:46 > 0:51:50This is someone who firmly believes that friends ARE electric.
0:51:56 > 0:52:01Brewster Kahle is the founder and self-styled "digital librarian"
0:52:01 > 0:52:03of the Internet Archive,
0:52:03 > 0:52:07a not-for-profit organisation that's embarked on an ambitious programme
0:52:07 > 0:52:11to scan and digitise every book in the world
0:52:11 > 0:52:15and to make them available on the internet to all comers for free -
0:52:15 > 0:52:19subject, of course, to the objections of copyright holders.
0:52:19 > 0:52:24But the thing that sets this apart from similar projects,
0:52:24 > 0:52:30like Google's, for example, is that the Internet Archive doesn't just turn books into data -
0:52:30 > 0:52:34it also preserves them in their physical form.
0:52:34 > 0:52:40The Archive's stated aim is to get a copy of every book ever published,
0:52:40 > 0:52:43an ink-on-paper cede-back,
0:52:43 > 0:52:44just in case.
0:52:47 > 0:52:51'So what do you get for the librarian who wants everything?
0:52:54 > 0:52:58'Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 could be a good choice,
0:52:58 > 0:53:00'a novel about a society in which books are banned
0:53:00 > 0:53:05'and burned by the authorities while rebels in the underground
0:53:05 > 0:53:08'learn them off by heart to preserve them.
0:53:08 > 0:53:11'Yes, that sounds about right.'
0:53:13 > 0:53:16Now, people can understand the kind of digital aspect to this,
0:53:16 > 0:53:18this digital...the Internet Archive,
0:53:18 > 0:53:21but the fact is you're as passionate about physical books
0:53:21 > 0:53:25as you are about digital books, so every digital version you have, you have the physical book.
0:53:25 > 0:53:30We wanted to make sure that that copy was not lost,
0:53:30 > 0:53:34because in some sense, it's like the specimen of a butterfly
0:53:34 > 0:53:36or an ant that defines a species,
0:53:36 > 0:53:40this might be the book that defines the digital version
0:53:40 > 0:53:42that lives on for ever,
0:53:42 > 0:53:45so the idea is to preserve those physical books,
0:53:45 > 0:53:50so we've now figured out a mechanism, a technology,
0:53:50 > 0:53:53for basically storing these in temperature and humidity controls
0:53:53 > 0:53:59- very inexpensively for the long term. - And you love, obviously, looking at your library,
0:53:59 > 0:54:03you love the way that books look, the way they feel and in a way,
0:54:03 > 0:54:06what you've got done and how you've gone about it is to retain
0:54:06 > 0:54:10that sense of the particularity of each book that you're reading
0:54:10 > 0:54:12and its moment in time.
0:54:12 > 0:54:14Oh, yes, it's for the love of books.
0:54:14 > 0:54:18I mean, what treasures they are.
0:54:18 > 0:54:23So many people have spent so many years not just writing the words
0:54:23 > 0:54:26but also making the physical artefact, and about how it's laid out,
0:54:26 > 0:54:30and so if we're going to go and try and offer these books
0:54:30 > 0:54:32with the same gusto that we grew up with
0:54:32 > 0:54:36to the next generation, let's do it as well as possible.
0:54:36 > 0:54:39We may go and use them in new and different ways and take them apart
0:54:39 > 0:54:43and fly them into virtual-reality worlds -
0:54:43 > 0:54:45great, but let's not lose
0:54:45 > 0:54:48the treasures that are the physical books
0:54:48 > 0:54:52that our society has grown on for a few centuries.
0:54:52 > 0:54:58We get ten million downloads a month of these old books. Ten million!
0:54:58 > 0:54:59That's pretty good!
0:54:59 > 0:55:06And the idea of a worldwide population diving into materials
0:55:06 > 0:55:09that are decades, centuries old, I think is quite encouraging.
0:55:09 > 0:55:14I've brought you a gift, Brewster, for the library.
0:55:14 > 0:55:17This is Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.
0:55:17 > 0:55:21I've chosen it rather selectively,
0:55:21 > 0:55:24because this is a rather important book for your library, I think.
0:55:24 > 0:55:28Oh, I think this is a fantastic book, of course, but you know,
0:55:28 > 0:55:31I think he was somewhat wrong.
0:55:31 > 0:55:35The idea that there's people going out and burning books,
0:55:35 > 0:55:37actually, I'm not sure is the real problem.
0:55:37 > 0:55:39It's that it's getting flooded,
0:55:39 > 0:55:41that there's just so much information,
0:55:41 > 0:55:45so surfacing great books like this is the right thing to do,
0:55:45 > 0:55:49but I think this does add a good compendium at the end,
0:55:49 > 0:55:51which is, people become books.
0:55:51 > 0:55:55They incorporate, they read a book so much that they become the book
0:55:55 > 0:56:00and they can recite the book, so it asks us, "Which book are we?"
0:56:00 > 0:56:03And I think everyone that's read one of these can say,
0:56:03 > 0:56:07"OK, if I were walking around in the woods, what book would I be?"
0:56:07 > 0:56:11And I think I would be either Euclid's Elements,
0:56:11 > 0:56:14that was written at the Library of Alexandria,
0:56:14 > 0:56:15or Ben Franklin's autobiography.
0:56:15 > 0:56:18- What book would you be? - That's a very interesting one.
0:56:18 > 0:56:21Only because it was an important book to me,
0:56:21 > 0:56:24I would be Candide by Voltaire, you know that book?
0:56:24 > 0:56:28Ah, good one! Yes. That's not just a book, it's a style of life.
0:56:28 > 0:56:30It's terrific.
0:56:34 > 0:56:38'To end the tour, Brewster took me to the Archive's inner sanctum.'
0:56:38 > 0:56:41This is pretty extraordinary. Explain this!
0:56:41 > 0:56:45- Welcome to the Internet Archive. - Who are they?
0:56:45 > 0:56:48These are terracotta archivists. These are us.
0:56:48 > 0:56:51These are the people that are building the archive.
0:56:52 > 0:56:55'Originally a Christian Scientist temple,
0:56:55 > 0:56:59'the building remains a temple of a sort.
0:56:59 > 0:57:04'Anyone who works here for five years is immortalised in clay,
0:57:04 > 0:57:08'just like the warriors and foot soldiers of ancient China.'
0:57:08 > 0:57:12We see ourselves as a step in a long tradition.
0:57:12 > 0:57:16Yes, people think, "Oh, the digital world, everything's new again,
0:57:16 > 0:57:19"we can reinvent everything, we don't have to read history."
0:57:19 > 0:57:22Um, we don't think that's true in the least.
0:57:22 > 0:57:24- So let me show you something else. - Yeah.
0:57:24 > 0:57:28There's the actual servers, the stacks,
0:57:28 > 0:57:32the materials that actually are serving the public,
0:57:32 > 0:57:36are here in this space as well.
0:57:36 > 0:57:42These are the actual computer systems that store books, music and video.
0:57:42 > 0:57:44Every light that's blinking
0:57:44 > 0:57:48is either somebody uploading or downloading something.
0:57:48 > 0:57:54Those are people all over the world accessing millions of books.
0:57:54 > 0:57:58The idea that every one of those lights represents somebody caring,
0:57:58 > 0:58:02somebody using, somebody leveraging the library
0:58:02 > 0:58:09sort of in some sense brings a physicality to a very digital world.
0:58:14 > 0:58:18There are now millions of books up there, somewhere in the cloud,
0:58:18 > 0:58:22that mist of invisible data that cloaks our world.
0:58:22 > 0:58:25If things continue the way they are going, your book shelf,
0:58:25 > 0:58:30your book shop and your library will be up there too before long,
0:58:30 > 0:58:33along with your music, your photographs, your letters,
0:58:33 > 0:58:38your diaries, your newspaper, your shopping lists, your memories,
0:58:38 > 0:58:40your dreams and your secrets,
0:58:40 > 0:58:45all the things that have made you who you are.
0:58:50 > 0:58:53But meantime, back on terra firma,
0:58:53 > 0:58:57real books and virtual books exist side by side.
0:58:59 > 0:59:04This is, for now at least, the best of all possible worlds.
0:59:04 > 0:59:09As it says in Candide, "You can browse the shelves in the old way
0:59:09 > 0:59:13"or you can plug into the cloud and bring a digital book down to Earth."
0:59:13 > 0:59:18- Good morning.- Good morning.- I'd like to buy a copy of Robinson Crusoe.
0:59:18 > 0:59:21OK. Did you have a particular version in mind?
0:59:21 > 0:59:23- Can you show me what you've got?- Yeah.
0:59:24 > 0:59:27So through this machine, we have kind of newer versions,
0:59:27 > 0:59:31with new covers and nice typeface.
0:59:31 > 0:59:33We also have facsimiles of the old originals
0:59:33 > 0:59:36that have been scanned from libraries.
0:59:36 > 0:59:40There's versions from the late 1800s, early 1900s,
0:59:40 > 0:59:41there's a Japanese version,
0:59:41 > 0:59:44there's all sorts of things will show up on this database.
0:59:46 > 0:59:48You can even find copies
0:59:48 > 0:59:51with the stamps, stains and battle scars of real books,
0:59:51 > 0:59:55and once you've made your choice, you can print a physical copy
0:59:55 > 0:59:59of that book in the time it takes to make an espresso.
0:59:59 > 1:00:03MUSIC: "Brazil"
1:00:19 > 1:00:21It looks like a book.
1:00:22 > 1:00:24It feels like a book.
1:00:27 > 1:00:29It even smells like a book.
1:00:30 > 1:00:32It IS a book, and it took five minutes.
1:00:34 > 1:00:37- There you go, sir. - Thank you very much.
1:00:40 > 1:00:42We can't really blame technology
1:00:42 > 1:00:45for ending our long relationship with books.
1:00:45 > 1:00:49All technology has done is to offer us a choice -
1:00:49 > 1:00:52to stay on our desert island,
1:00:52 > 1:00:55secure and separate with the books we love,
1:00:55 > 1:00:58or to strike out into the unknown
1:00:58 > 1:01:01and navigate the digital ocean.
1:01:02 > 1:01:06And who's to say what strange and surprising adventures
1:01:06 > 1:01:08await us there?
1:01:10 > 1:01:13MUSIC: "Brazil"
1:01:50 > 1:01:53Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
1:01:53 > 1:01:55E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk