Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
While I concur that certain art forms wax and wane, I don't see any particular reason why books as a whole will become more or less popular than they are now. For example, the "cell phone books" is a big craze in Japan, despite all the competing media. Social pressures that affect things like what art forms rise and fall in popularity are extremely difficult to predict.
Separately, while there will likely be many convulsions in the existing players in the book biz, I expect there will always be a role for publishers and editors (and reviewers), even if it's not quite the same as it was in the early 20th Century. There is too much poorly edited (and poorly written) junk out there, and filtration will always be needed. In addition, any writer who wants a national (let alone international) presence is going to need resources far beyond what an individual can muster, especially those just starting out.
|
Publishers of content, gatekeepers of content, editors of content - yes, I grudgingly agree they will be in place as long as there is a profitable business to be had from making cultural objects available. Publishers of books and novels? Not so much.
The Japan thing is happening 'right-now', but in the future why would anybody read a text-based story? I assume that you, as I, was brought up with books in my immediate culture. There was a library at school, a town library nearby, bookshops and classes in school where books were part of the curriculum. But with the libraries gone, the book shops closed and the schools shifting more and more to a digital based learning experience, where is the exposure to the novel and the short story? Where is the culture that supports the books? Again, let me make this clear, stories will always exist. I just believe the form will change and I believe that form is the video game (or what the video game will eventually become).
Quote:
Why not? Just because other forms of entertainment are more popular?
The rise of TV did not necessarily thwart the cultural import of On the Road, Slaughterhouse Five, All the President's Men, Beloved and so forth. Nor did the rise of radio stunt Grapes of Wrath....
|
Not particularly because they're more popular, but because they're evolving at rapid rates beyond what we've seen before. I can only imagine what we'll see in ten years time that will make what we have now look stupid, and what we have now is amazing. The video game is rapidly becoming the best of all worlds - story, visuals, interactivity and branched in meaning, it delivers more hours of entertainment than any entertainment that came before and is rapidly gaining deeper levels of meaning and possible meaning with each iteration.
An exemplum would be the PSOne game 'Silent Hill', which was as satisfying as any horror novel I've ever read and better than most horror movies of that time.
Story is at the heart of my meaning. Story will always exist. But the novel, the short story? These are forms of stories, specifically text-based and I believe that text-based entertainment will be gone within 20 years (a generation give or take) as we cut down our language use and become more heavily reliant on direct audio/visual communication in a digital world.