Post #645917 by White Devil on Sat, Jul 28, 2012 9:27 AM

First, let me iterate that my comments intend no slighting of any author’s scholarship and work: I’ve socialized with James and know that he’s a preeminent contributor to the Tiki revival. My objections here have to do with both the semantics and substance of revisionist viewpoints on publishing, and since Bigbrotiki (among others) goes to such lengths to preserve the accuracy of tiki designations in this venue, I feel a responsibility to follow suit. I will reiterate that a .pdf file on a thumb drive is no more a book than Facebook is a book. I sell books professionally, and it’s not difficult for me or anyone else who’s ever handled a real book to tell the difference between a digitized scrolling manuscript and a professionally-bound and printed book.

Reading (or perhaps watching) text on a portable flat screen is something that most of us associate with free online content, but even those of us who manage to find some aesthetic appreciation for curling up in bed with a portable reading device are still only using streamlined office equipment. Your downloaded digital text may provide information and entertainment, but it’s not a book: it’s a bunch of ones and zeros that your piece of office equipment decodes and encodes. And though you may elect to print it out on paper, it still won’t become a book until you have it professionally bound between two physical covers.

Though written language predated the mass publishing of it, the handwritten proliferation of written language collections (scrolls, cuneiform and later books) is historically approximate to the flowering of human thought and language. From what I see today online and in texting, the advent of digitized communication will usher in the destruction of language. With the low standards of government-established education and the relative inexperience of the youth-dominated digital realm, what we’re currently experiencing is somewhat analogous to handing a ray-gun to a chimp.

I’m sure there’s much value to be gleaned from digital manuscript texts, regardless of what medium they’re stored on, but unless they qualify as books, both as a consumer and a dealer, I’m not going to invest in an artifact that’s not both inert and re-sellable. For my personal tastes, paying for a flat screen readout has as much appeal as reading transparencies on an overhead projector. From what I’ve read on comics blogs, the majority of image-obsessed comics fans have the same opinion about digital comics.

This is not to say that digitized content doesn’t have a future in the market: it undoubtedly does and will, but it’s important that the term “book” not be abused in the desire to describe something that is anything but a book. The proliferation of language and thought was the second-most significant cultural innovation in our history, following the acquisition of fire. It should not be viewed as being unimportantly mutable to the level of meaninglessness: it is the very definition of meaning. And don’t let the asinine smugness of Wired magazine persuade you otherwise. A ceramic mug with the word “tiki” printed on it is not a tiki mug as we define it, and a digital photo of a tiki mug uploaded, emailed, downloaded, decoded and viewed on your e-reader is neither a tiki mug nor a book.

Now as to the intricacies of who did what to whom historically, there are literally tons of (real) books out here that will give you one view or another, depending upon how PC you care to be. I like reading about James Cook’s travels and adventures, but I don’t care one bit about how he’s treated in the current textbooks from the Cook Islands or anywhere else. It seems to me that Thor Heyerdahl and other explorers did a lot more toward preserving and celebrating the physical arts and traditions of the places he visited than the aborigines who gave away or sold their own culture’s manufactures. I don’t care for the didactic, punitive wagging finger of historic revisionism that tells me that my forebears should have done things differently, especially when the owner of that wagging finger has done little more in his or her life than parrot someone else’s ideas they read in (real) books or online. Again, that’s not a disrespect of anyone or any group: it’s pointing out a certain element of hypocrisy in what passes for modern thought.

So to one and all, I say again, don’t take this criticism personally: it’s not meant to be. I own all of James’ (real) books (which are inscribed: another shortcoming of digital texts), and will buy each and every future book he manages to publish. Those real books will have real pages with real ink on them, and will be bound with real glue or thread, and will be professionally (if mechanically) contained between printed covers. I may or may not concur with the viewpoint expressed within, but if it displeases me too much I can resell it in the real book market. I won’t be the least bit troubled about the number of trees that went to pulp for my reading pleasure or displeasure, because I live in a state and a region which has no lack of this renewable resource. In fact the only part of the state uncivilized enough to cut down most of its trees is the state capital of Atlanta, so for now let that serve as object lesson about who’s more civilized than whom.