Out of Print
Transcript
A documentary by Vivienne Roumani
Copyright © 2013 by VR Films LLC
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U.S. Copyright Office Registration Number PA 1-849-245
All rights reserved. No part of this transcript may be copied or circulated without written permission.
| TEXT | VISUALS |
| 0:03 Bezos: We co- evolve with our tools. We change our tools and then our tools change us. Certainly the book has probably changed us more than any other tool. For 500 years it has been this incredibly important tool for humanity. | Falling books Book shelves Book spines Hand taking our book from bookshelf |
| 0:21 Friedman: Books are the foundation of civilization. You walk into someone’s house what’s the first thing you look at, as a literate human being, you look at their library.
| Display of old books Dramatic large book shelves (Sotheby)
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| 0:30 Darnton: This can sound romantic, but the feel of a book, the texture of the paper, even its smell -- they are the best way of preserving information ever invented. | Book pages flipping Sensual book pages Old book corner pages |
| 0:44 Wesch: But in the digital age we really have to start questioning what a book really is, because they will soon cease to exist in large part. | Books falling
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| 0:57 Darnton: Technological changes are transforming the world of words. | Hands keying Mouse Eye moving Fast finger moving through script
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| 1:03 Leu: The very nature of information and the way in which it’s presented is changing. It’s certainly an exciting time. | More fast fingers over electronic text More fast web searches |
| 1:09 Bass: This generation will still be attached, but a couple of generations down may not even know what a book is. | Children in school hall holding hands Children in hall Children sitting in library with teacher reading |
| 1:17 Toobin: Is the experience of sitting down and reading an entire book disappearing? I have some questions. | Various people reading on various gadgets including books |
| 1:26 Barlow: Do I think that people read full books now? No. you know unless it’s a Danielle Steele novel that you’re reading the beach. I think it’s actually kind of rare that people read a full book. | People with gadgets, walking, reading |
| 1:36 Wesch: The danger is that there is a possibility that we are now starting to read at a more surface level, rather than in depth | Eye ball moving Reflections of web on eye |
| 1:44 Wolf: Our children I think are lurching from one entertaining piece of information to the next; they aren’t learning how to think. | Children on computers Children on gadgets |
| 1:53 NARRATION: Every aspect of the written world has changed - from publishing, to writing, to selling, and to reading. If books are the foundation of society, how does that change the world of ideas? And how does it change us? | Various shots of people, reading, on gadgets, web sites, and a vintage image of man on ladder in library, B&W |
| 2:11 TITLE: Out of Print 2:16 Narrated By: Meryl Streep | Background printed words |
| 2:28 Screen text accompanying graphic
| Alice in Wonderland graphic “You promised to tell me your history, you know’” Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland |
| 2:32 Manguel: At some point in that mysterious afternoon, someplace in the deserts of Mesopotamia, somebody realized that they could set down a code that could be deciphered, and thereby invented reading and thereby invented writing and thereby invented Hamlet and Alice in Wonderland and all our literatures and imaginary creations.
| Stone exhibit Rare book being opened Morgan Library Rare Books |
| 3:01 Cooper: Writing was not invented to transmit literature, nor was it invented to write letters. Writing began as an administrative technology, as a bureaucratic technology that was one of the solutions to the problem of urban density and complexity. | Time line begins Stone tablets
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| 3:20 Voelkle: This is one of our most famous scrolls that chartered the life and ancestry of Christ. Of course it starts with Adam and Eve.
| Unrolling an ancient scroll Scroll image |
| 3:29 Leu: We had scrolls, and people thought oh we can get so much information here in a single scroll. | More scroll |
| 3:35 Dykers: It can take up to 60, sometimes 80 scrolls, to do a small size book. You can only roll up so much material. | More scrolls |
| 3:43 Leu: And then people realized you couldn't get information at the end of the scroll without unrolling the whole thing, and so they started chopping it up and making codexes, the precursor to books. | Old codex, book |
| 3:54 Darnton: The codex is just the book as we know it. It’s a wonderful invention but it was new around the time of the birth of Christ. It was actually connected with the spread of Christianity because Christian writings spread through this new machine, the codex, and it spread like wildfire. (brief pause) Of course the invention of moveable type is a great breakthrough. | Codex, old book corner pages Time line continues Morgan Library Rare Book Room |
| 4:20 Vintage Film Clip 4:26 Film Narrator: Printing is more essential to man’s progress than any other art. By means of printing the fund of knowledge accumulated through the ages is available to everyone, rich and poor alike.
| Film clip, Printing |
| 4:38 Rozzo (in Italian): In 1450, Gutenberg invented movable type. For us, it is probably difficult to comprehend the revolution that printing brought us. It was not an invention of a cultural nature. Gutenberg wanted to resolve a practical problem, to reproduce text quickly and economically. And we know that the printing press is responsible for the spread of the Reformation, beyond Germany, to Italy, France and other countries.
| Time line back with image of Gutenberg
Gutenberg Bible, leather binding, illustration
Text of the Bible in various angles |
| 5:15 Bezos: The physical book as an object is so elegant, and so suited to its task. It’s been evolving for 500 years. When you get into an author’s words, you can really forget about that physical object, it disappears, which is a fantastic trick for a technology to be able to disappear like that. And the physical book is a technology. | Pages turning
Different angles of same
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| 5:41 NARRATION: Something like an important general reading public emerged around the time of the American Revolution, and the book developed itself a kind of democratic potential. Then came the Industrial Revolution. But the next big change is just yesterday.
| Sculpture in Morgan Library holding book Time line
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| 6:07 Darnton: The new era of not only of the Internet, not only the World Wide Web, not only search engines, but these fabulously talented engineers who are creating algorithms to find for you the reader exactly what you want to find, these have changed the world and so the information that is now at the fingertips of people is quite different from the information that existed only ten years ago.
| B&W tech images Web searches Hand holding gadget People sitting on steps with laptop Scrolling gadgets People walking using gadgets
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| 6:37 Interviewer: What format do you read on?- 6:38 BEZOS: What format do you use to read in? What format? Isn’t that an odd question? Could you even imagine that question 10 years ago? [Interviewer: Isn’t that amazing?] (Laughs.)
| Bezos |
| 6:53 LEU: 2005 was the tipping point. This was the year where adolescents started reading more on the internet than they did in traditional materials. | Keyboard Teenage girl Teenage boy using gadget Gadget closeup Teenagers laughing, playing e-game |
| 7:04 HS Student #1: We learn a lot through the computer now, that’s not what you guys did so I guess the way that we are reading is different, but I don’t think that the information that we are reading is that much different. |
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| 7:13 HS Student #2: I think it’s pretty different. Because when I’m on the Internet I’ll just search, you know, like something about snowboarding. And then if I am reading a book, that’s something I’m being forced to read, so I’m thinking about how much I’d rather be sleeping, or how much I don’t want to read this book, stuff like that. | Fingers using laptop keyboard E-game control |
| 7:31 HS Student #3: Personally, when I am trying to do my homework, that involve textbook work, I go and look for the answers, or I Google up the answer, I am not sitting there reading the little details. | Gadget Student playing with iphone |
| 7:40 Female HS Student: My friend’s mom blocks Facebook in the afternoon when she is doing homework or when she’s on the computer and says she’s doing homework, and I kind of wish my mom did that, like I think that would be very helpful.
| Teenage profile and e-game in background |
| 07:58 NARRATION: Usually we equate a book with the physical object itself. In English we even use the same word -- book to describe both the story written on the page and the glue, paper, and binding to convey it. But now, contents no longer need the container, they are accessible anywhere, anytime at a moment’s notice. This has turned the business of books inside out. 08:28:07 | Leafing a books Brian Dettmer at work and Book Sculpture
Images and video of Dettmer and his work |
| Statistics on screen | Statistics on screen: 8:28 20% of American adults own an E-Reader
8:33 20% of American Adults own a tablet device Pew Internet survey, 2012
8:38 E-books account for 31% of publishing revenue for adult fiction Global E-Book Market, 2012 |
| 8:42 Darnton: You know, more books are published every year than in the previous year, in print. We are producing one million new books a year worldwide, one million., so the printed book is doing very well thank you. But individual publishers can be doing miserably. But that doesn’t mean the end of publishing. I think that publishers have to devise new strategies for making the most of the digital world. | aMazeMe
Cambridge U press Simon & Schuster
Window of Jane’s office pans to Jane |
| 9:11 Friedman: At one point I called it an evolution, that the publishing industry was going to evolve. Absolutely not, it’s been a revolution, and it even surprises me and I’m hard to surprise. (brief pause) Open Road was founded to be a digital only company. We have now close to 250 authors and close to 3000 titles. When I first started I was looking conservatively at digital being 10% of the business, I now think that it is clear that there are certain categories where digital may go to 80% and that is in the very popular fiction arena. E-books take no time to produce, there is none of the baggage of the paper print bind, inventory, transportation, get it out of boxes onto shelves. It’s press a button and it’s there. The fact is that buying things online is now something we all do. This is very positive for readers because readers will buy one finish, click and for a reasonable price buy number 2 and for a reasonable price click again and buy number 3. The publishing industry has been too slow to pick up this trend. I think that most of the publishers really wanted to just ignore it,. By the time they realized they couldn’t it was so ever present that you start running scared, and that’s when mistakes get made. | Jane at desk Open Road, signage Staff Lists of authors Book covers Offices
Graph E-reader, girl reading Kindle Vintage film
Pressing buttons
Buying online Amazon site, buy online Clicking Text Publishers store fronts
Book shelves panning |
| 10:54 Manguel: The whole book industry publishing and book selling, has become modeled on the supermarket model, so what you produce are objects of easy sale, that have a shelf life. They are almost stamped like eggs, saying sell by so and so date, and whatever isn’t sold disappears, so there is once again no room for the past, no room for things to grow. | Book panning
Books store shelves with clearance signs |
| 11:27 Turow: Since I became a professional writer increasingly it has become winner take all world in literature. For best selling authors it was great. You reduce the price of the book, it’s become a more concentrated market, best selling authors make much more money. But as president of the Authors Guild, and as an American, I am not concerned with what lines my pocket, but the overall cultural situation. We have begun to enter an era where it is much, much harder for a professional writers and authors to survive as a class. There will always be new authors. People will always burn with the urge to write. But as the outlets for sales become more concentrated, writers discover that they have not made enough money to support themselves, and of course they have to look for alternatives. I want to see cultural diversity, diversity of expression, and an opportunity for more people to make a livelihood as writers. | Turow’s books spines
Web site Authors Guild
Vintage writers film
Bookstores closing/closed
Back to vintage writer
Vintage film of people digging
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| 12:37 Friedman: More and more agents are complaining they can’t sell their books, the books that they are representing. More and more authors are saying they can’t get an agent. If they can’t get an agent they can’t get a publisher, and it’s a vicious circle. So they lean toward self publishing. |
Back of desk top panning to Darcie’s face |
| 12:53 Chan: I wrote my first novel in the early 2000’s, years ago when I was still working full time as an attorney. I did it mostly in the evenings after work, on the weekends. It took me about 2 ½ years to write. So my agent made a valiant effort, but because it was a first novel, it was a quiet story, and I was completely unknown, nobody was willing to take the risk and put it out there, so I put the book in a drawer. Lots of things sort of happened and I put writing on the back burner for a while, but I started reading about how e-books, and these things called Kindles and Nooks were becoming very popular, and I thought this might be an interesting course of action. So I thought maybe if I put my work out there as an e-book, then I can get some feedback on my work, and I wanted to use that to improve my writing. I never expected anything big to happen with my first book, but I thought maybe gradually over the course of months or years, maybe I could sell several hundred to a thousand copies, and gradually get my name out there as a writer. I uploaded it to the Kindle Store in May 2011. I think I sold about 100 copies the first month, and I thought that was amazing. That was more than I ever expected to sell so quickly. At the end of June my book was mentioned on a web site that offers recommendations for e-books. As a result of that mention I sold another 600 copies within just a couple of days. So this blew me away, I was stunned. I had done some inexpensive marketing, ads placed on these web sites that recommend e-books, I did some blog interviews with people, but nothing really expensive, I spent about $1000 for the entire attempt at trying to market my book and let people know that it was available. I also kept my prices very low because I thought if I price it very cheaply maybe people will take a chance on it. I’m watching the sales figures from Amazon, and from Barnes & Nobles and every week they are ticking up and ticking up and then they are starting to snowball. I called my agent and I said something is happening and I’m not sure quite what. But I just want you to know that the numbers seem to be going crazy. In August she called me and she said, Darcie your book is going to be on the New York Times best seller list. I can’t even describe how that was, I sort of kind of get chills just thinking about that. To date more than 650,000 copies have sold and I never expected to have that result when I hit the upload button in May. | Darcie
The Mill River Recluse manuscript on desk with iphone Darcie keying novel Book in drawer Photo of Darcie and baby Photo of Darcie and family around kitchen table E-book articles
Romanticized version of her novel and holding her novel
Uploading it to the Kindle store
Counter of books being sold
Web site recommending ebooks
Counter again numbers moving
Marketing sites with Darcie’s book
Counter ticking up
Best seller list
Counter ticking up
Darcie’s desk, panning to her book cover |
| 16:03 Turow: I am a big fan of self-publishing, I am glad that people can in some instances find a large readership. The cases where that happens are extremely small. | Self publishing site Darcie’s face on site |
| 16:19 Stats on screen | Half of all self-published authors make $500 or less. Taleist Self-Publishing Survey 2012 |
| 16:24 Friedman: I think there was now something like 700,000 self published books last year, so the fact is that I think self publishing is an alternative, but it’s going to be the few and far between book that gets any attention and any sales. | List of Self Published books, scrolling faster and faster
Scrolls back up fast to focus on Darcie’s novel |
| 16:43 Chan: In terms of what worked for me, I thought a lot about it and I’m not quite sure that I even have the answer. My next book will be published by Ballantine books, which is a division of Random House. I am one of those people who thinks there is a lot of value in a traditional publisher. I really am thrilled that I won’t have to do everything myself, I won’t have to do the cover, I won’t have to do the editing, I won’t have to do the formatting, the marketing, all of those things which you have to be responsible for if you are self-published take away from your writing time. The other thing is, you still can’t get a self published book into the retail stores where people that read those books usually buy them. |
Darcie is keying
Web site of her work
Cove, editing, formatting, marketing
Books store Book shelves People buying books
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| 17:29 Narration: Bookstores, traditionally, have been where new authors and ideas get their first exposure. They are where you, the reader, can get face-to-face recommendations for books from people you trust. But now that relationship is changing, as more and more book sales go online -- that alters our relationship with the books themselves. | Book store store front Books store shelves Face to face with reader Personal signs recommending titles Hands going through books Strand sign |
| 17:52 Bass: My name is Fred Bass and I run the Strand bookstore with my daughter Nancy Bass. It was started by my dad Benjamin Bass in 1927. We think we are one of the largest used bookstores in the country and definitely in the world. There used to be 48 bookstores there, running from Union Sq. down to Bay Street. They are all gone now, we are the last survivor. | Fred at work Reflection of store in mirror
NY street scenes |
| 18:20: STATS on screen
| 18:20 There were 6,600 independent bookstores in the U.S. in 1991. NY Times, 1991 American Booksellers Associiation
18:24 By 2012 they fell 70% American Booksellers Association
18:27 By 2011, 76% of all books and magazine purchase in the US were done on the Internet. US Census Bureau, 2011
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| 18:33 Bass: The world is changing very fast and the digital world is stepping in, and that’s what’s going to take over. There is no way we can compete with Amazon on it, or Google, and anybody who tries to do it on their own, there is no way they can do it, period. That’s it. | Fingering books in bookstore
More bookstore scene |
| 18:54 Turow: If the market determines that bookstores are not worth having, then so be it. My present concern though is that Amazon, by selling ebooks, what are called front list ebooks, that is the books that are most in demand, by selling them below cost are creating artificial incentives for people to move from physical books to ebooks, and I don’t think that that’s right. If you destroy the physical bookstore by allowing predatory pricing it’s going to be much harder for new authors to get a foothold in this market. | Bookstore and staff with book boxes Woman on ladder taking pictures with her iPhone of book cover Bass working Books he is handling List of front list ebooks
Bookstore and people looking at and buying books
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| 19:34 Bezos: Our point of view is very different. One of the things that Amazon has changed is that it has made it easier for people to find that hard to find book so it has increased the diversity of availability. That was really our founding idea. Unless you are a best selling author, it can be hard to get your book not only noticed, but somebody has to actually find your book which may not be that easy. | Amazon web page
Kindle Singles Amazon.com building, Seattle
Editor’s Pick page on Amazon
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| 20:06 Chan: Amazon was very important to the success of my book. I know that they do a lot of internal marketing efforts. They are able to tell what kinds of books people like and therefore when they recommend a book to one of their customers it’s based on previous purchases and previous kinds of books that that person has read, so I do think that really helped to get my book in front of potential readers | Amazon Press Release
Various web sites with suggestions
Site of Darcie’s book, item to consider
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| 20:31 Turow: You know, I admire a lot of the creativity that Amazon has brought to the literary marketplace, and I despise the ruthlessness with which they act as competitors. They could do a lot more good with a little less savagery. | Amazon.com building
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| 20:53 Bass: We think we will survive because of the book itself and the type of books we have the antiquarian sort of decorative things that people want. In fact we may become a curiosity. In 20 or 30 years, people will come and say, would you like to see this curious store, has all this old stuff. There’s got to be a need for somebody to have a store like mine to be selling that stuff. I think the really people that are going to hurt are the libraries. There won’t be any need to go to the library to look up something. It would be much faster to do it right through your computer, or right through your phone. The big university libraries, and many of the public libraries certainly will start disappearing. | Someone taking books out of boxes
Rare Book Room sign Spines of rare books More Strand bookstore scenes
Library building Several library building Street scene Lion, NYPL People sitting at tables using laptops Library buildings Woman coming out of library with her children |
| 21:40 Rozzo (in Italian): In 1627, Gabriel Node, a French intellectual publishes a work on the idea of building libraries. He said noblemen should take on the responsibility to build public libraries, open to all. | Photo of Gariel Naude Scroll through text of the work |
| 21:57 Bradbury: Libraries began to occupy my life when I was 6 years old, and every Monday night I ran to the library, a Carnegie library , at the center of Waukegan. Carnegie was the genius who affected all our lives; he gave the library to every state in the union, every city, and he gave them free as gifts of knowledge. There was a typing room in the basement of the library and I got a bag of dimes and moved in, 10cents a half hour, and in nine days I wrote the first version of Fahrenheit 451. |
Waukegan public library Carnegie portrait Carnegie libraries Block dedication: The Gift of Andrew Carnegie Erected, 1904 More Carnegie libraries
Book cover, Bradbury author |
| 22:38 Leu: Making access universal that has been the traditional goal of libraries, they provide open access to information for the entire population | Flipping through card catalog Library shelves Girl on stool looking for book Man looking through book shelf Woman looking at book on shelf |
| 22:52 Dykers: But the Internet allows for a much wider dissemination of knowledge, and easier access to information by larger groups | Library room with laptops Students |
| 23:03 Interviewer -Do you guys even go to the library?
23:05 HS Student #1: When we do research like we aren’t going to go to the library and look through two big books, go to the glossary index and stuff. We just Google it and it’s right there. | Students Student looking at a big book in library Same student leafing book
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| 23:13 HS Student #3: One of my first official times getting information from the library was probably one of the hardest experiences of my life. There were so many books for so many different things, like each book is specific to one thing, it’s not like you can find one big book filled with everything that you needed. So I was like this is terrible, I just want to Google it. | Distorted view of books shelves, dizzing
Lots of books shelves
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| 23:34 Library User: I was wondering where I could find Hamlet? | Reference Desk |
| 23:36 Librarian: The Book or the movie? | Interaction with librarian |
| 23:37 Library User: The book 23:38 Librarian: 822.33. It’s around the elevator in the back and (indistinct) | Librarian gives directions |
| 23:44 CCNY Librarian: I think the funding for libraries is a very touchy issue because we are not a commercial entity, we’re not a money making entity and we’re dependent on state budgets for this funding, and that comes and goes with whatever the budget crisis is this year.
[Librarian to user: So when you get off the elevator, there’s a bunch of cabinets that look like this over here, and they’re all to the right].
Right now, we’re seeing a surge in requests to purchase reference books that are e-books because people want to be able to use everything online, and I don’t know how the library is going to accommodate that because the pricing is very high for digital access and there’s still this fear of “will we be able to have access to that digital reference book in the future?” | Library book display Staff at circulation desk in action
Librarian at desk in action
Computers on table
Gutman Library |
| 24:40 Dykers: With the advent of digital technology the focus on physical objects is changed and we are seeing that people use libraries more to interact with each rather than a storehouse for books. | People sitting reading Woman at desk from the back, looking into the room Gutman Library meeting |
| 24:55 Friedman: Libraries are great meeting places and I think that has to be more developed today. | Gutman Library people meeting |
| 25:01 Dykers: Libraries are evolving into something which very much resembles the initial libraries of the ancients. It was filled with places for conversation, places for openness. We are seeing coffee shops in libraries, we are seeing other types of media, they are becoming more integrated with ordinary life. | More Gutman Robina Illustration Coffee shop Multimedia library displays |
| 25:28 Darnton: Digital publication is exciting, it’s thrilling its magnificent but it does have problems, one of the problems is preservation. | Looking from outside into library inside
|
| 25:42 STATS on screen
| Over display of DVDs 25:42 Average lifespan of a CD/DVD: 2 to 5 years U.S. National Archives, 2007
25:47 Average lifespan of a hard drive: 5 to 10 years Fifth Usenix Conference on File and Storage Technologies, 2007
25:52 Average lifespan of magnetic tape: 10 - 15 years Digital Preservation Coalition, 2005 |
| 25:54 Darnton: Digital texts are fragile. As you know, they are made up of tiny little ones and zeros, and if only a few of them unravel, the entire text can be destroyed. There is a problem of obsolescence: the hardware and the software can become obsolete. | text, turns into 01, then unravels Fingers keying
Vintage machines |
| 26:15 Toobin: I have some floppy discs buried in my desk, and who knows if I will ever go back to it or find a machine where it works. | More vintage machines |
| 26:27 Rozzo (in Italian): Not that long ago, there were the VHS tapes. I have a collection of films that I can no longer watch. It doesn’t exist anymore. If we look at a book from 1470, generally it looks like it was printed yesterday. | More machines
Morgan library, Gutenberg Bible |
| 26:46 Darnton: And then there is the problem that many people don’t appreciate, and that’s the problem of finding a digital text in cyberspace. So it may be preserved, but how are you going to find it? You put all that together and the problems of preservation are gigantic. No information comes free. Who is going to pay the cost of large masses of information? | Long rows of metal storage
Wires
Books falling |
| 27:17 Turow: Google a number of years ago entered into an arrangement with 7 major university libraries, and scanned their entire collections, and proposed to make snippets of these books available to Google users. | Keying Google books Hamlet full book
Kirtas book scanning machine |
| 27:42 Toobin: Google may be may be in a position to exercise too much power, because what if they cut it off or what if they use it for untoward ends? | Book being scanned by Kirtas |
| 27:51 Manguel: They are a commercial enterprise that if they want can put ads at every page, and end up by charging us fortunes for using Hamlet or Moby Dick. | Google page
|
| 28:05 Barlow: What they ended up doing is something that would privatize what has been public, they are making a privately owned copy of many, many works that are already in the public domain. They are reversing the Carnegie model of making knowledge available to the masses, they are saying “all right, we will make knowledge available to the masses, but the masses have to pay for it.” | Book being scanned by Kirtas
Carnegie engraved in wall
Carnegie library building
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| 28:33 Turow: The Authors Guild sued Google over that. Google said “well, we are only showing each customer a little snippet, and that’s a fair use under the copyright laws.” | Google headquarters Copyright law text
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| 28:43 Darnton: The fair use provision means that for certain uses it’s legal to make copyrighted books available without paying the owners of the copyright. | Fair use text |
| 28:53 Turow: The copyright law has always allowed that. For example, you can quote from a book in a book review. We say at the Authors Guild “that’s boloney. You are using the entire time book, you’ll display a snippet to a thousand different customers, and every time you display that snippet, you’re making money because you’re selling advertising on the side of the page.” | Fair use text
Search on Google for Farneheit 451
Scroll down
Advertising on the page |
| 29:15 Darnton: They violated copyright, and so they were sued. And what always happens in these cases, secret negotiations for I think for 4 ½ years. | Google sued on online newsclip
Book settlement text on web page |
| 29:27 Turow: The settlement that we all agreed on, which I thought was in the best interest of authors, publishers and the American public unfortunately was not approved. | Court rejects Google Settlement text screen |
| 29:38 Darnton: The judge threw it out because he said it violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and that meant Google Book Search books dead. The major concern is democratization. Democratization of access to knowledge. We don’t want a monopoly of access to knowledge, knowledge belongs to the people, so I think we should open it up and, so to speak, democratize it, make it accessible to everyone. It all began with a conference here at Harvard. I invited a group of leaders of foundations, of libraries, computer engineers. We discussed the possibility of creating a public library for the people that would be digital, and we called it the Digital Public Library of America. We are creating a system that will interlock the research collections of the major libraries in this country in cooperation with Europe and we will create a so called distributed network, which means that books digitized in Chicago, Los Angeles, Texas will all be linked up in one virtual library. We feel that as a public institution for the public good, unlike Google, we should be able to take advantage of the fair use provision. | Web sites showing the case
Google search turned off
Dynamic video of DPLA meeting
DPLA Logo
Globe with library thumbnails and connective lines
Globe with thumbnails of moving book scanning videos
Text of fair use |
| 31:06 Turow: You know, Darnton says that Google didn’t go far enough and that we should just digitize everything and there should be open access to it. Again I guess my response is pretty simple. It’s essential to protect copyright. If individual authors chose to make books available as a matter of public access, they can and should, but the idea that those who want to make their work available for free should be diminishing the opportunity of people to make a living as writers, is frankly a baffling position to me. You know we are in a capitalist society. People create products and expect to be rewarded for doing that. If we want to have a communist society that’s fine, and there can be equal and open access to all kinds of goods and services and capital, but as long as we are stuck with the capitalist model, then it has to apply to everybody. I am appalled when you select a single class of people in a society and say “what you create is going to be given away.” I noticed that nobody is saying that to General Motors, or Microsoft, or frankly, even to universities. |
Copyright text
Copyright Free symbols
DPLA logo
Vintage video of capitalism and communism
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| 32:27 Toobin: I think the big problem is that we have a world full of information consumers who are happy to get information from any number of sources but unwilling to pay for it. , |
The Pirate Bay
Searching and downloading Turow and Toubin’s works
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| 32:54 Stats on screen:
| 32:54 33% of all E-reader/tablet owners downloaded pirated books
33:00 Another 15% preferred “not to answer” Verso Digital, 2011 |
| 33:01 Toobin: This is not a hypothetical issue for me. I am now of an age where my kids and my peers’ kids are starting to think about having jobs, and all of my journalist friends basically like their jobs but think “would you tell a kid to go work at a newspaper? You’d have to be out of your mind.” So what do they do if they want to be in communications? I don’t know exactly. (pause) Information is not free. Someone ultimately has to pay for it or it won’t be done. | Vintage clip of newspaper office, reporters, being paid
More downloading from Pirate Bay |
| 33:41 Barlow: And that’s a key point: you know, people say, well, if people don’t get paid, they won’t contribute. That’s just not so, and people are getting paid, perhaps not with money in this particular instance, but with the collective resource that they all can use. |
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| 34:02 Darnton: I would hope that this library will serve new authors in at least two ways. The first way is it will make information accessible to them, too. You know, you don’t just sit down and write a book, you do research. Two, it will help get access to their works. OK, we’re not going to help them make a million, but we will help them reach a million readers. | DPLA Logo and information
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| 34:26 Turow: Do I believe that knowledge should be widely disseminated? Of course I do. And do I as an author and most authors crave readers? Of course I do. But again, if you destroy the livelihood of writers, fewer people will write, the culture will be poorer in the long run. |
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| 34:51 Mark Twain copyright cartoon 34:55: text over cartoon: “A person who won’t read has no advantage over a person who can’t read” MARK TWAIN NOTEBOOK, 1902- 1903 |
| 35:01 NARRATION: Of course everyone wants a world where books and writers promote the free flow of ideas. But perhaps the bigger question is, will there be anyone to read them? Are the troubles of the publishing industry because of technology, or because people just don’t read books anymore? | Book boxes, book shelves, books, like the “Return to the Red Schoolhouse”
Boxes, small shelf of books deep beyond boxes |
| 35:19 Stats on screen
| 35:19 One out of four Americans over age 16 did not read a single book in 2012. Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2012
35:24 The average adult in California reads at a seventh grade level. California Health Literacy Initiative, 2008
35:29 46% of American adults cannot understand the label on their prescription medicine. Reference: Journal of the AMA, 1999 |
| 35:33 Darnton: One thing is clear, that we have a very high, a distressingly high, rate of illiteracy or functional illiteracy in this country, and that most Americans don’t read books, I think more Americans read books in the 17th Century than they do in the 21st Century, proportionally
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People reading gadgets |
| 35:56 Bezos: If you look at technology over the last 20 years, most of our connective devices, whether it be, you know, a smart phone, or a lap top, these are very good for reading news articles, email messages, blog posts. We humans do more of what is convenient and easy for us, and so I think there has been a shift over the last 20 years away form long form reading, book length reading, and toward short form reading. | More people looking at their gadgets of all kinds |
| 36:32 Man in the street interviews 36:32 Man #1: I read lots of sports, blogs 36:35 Woman #1: I’m on Twitter a lot 36:32 Woman #2: I do use Facebook every day 36:38 Man #2: I read all day long, but I read a lot of blogs and news articles. 36:43 Man #3: Music 36:44 Woman #3: News 36:45 Woman #4: The latest discussion 36:46: Woman #5: It is an addiction. I feel like I have to check Facebook every five minutes. | Lots of people of different ages, fast pace Students |
| 36:50 Wolf: It is a constant set of distractions. Constant, continuous bombardment. You go here, and then you are immediately attracted to this other direction of thought. My question is : Are we reading better, or are we just accruing information without true knowledge? | Distractions Tom chasing all his open iMac windows Eye ball moving
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| 37:10 Union Sqare Book Club: 37:10 Woman #1: It is a different experience to read something online or to read the newspaper online. 37:16 Woman #2: I think it becomes an addiction. For example, every day in the morning I’ll go and check out the newspaper online, and then whatever I chose to read I’m really just getting quick snippets. I’ll go to TMZ.com, then I’ll go to AOL.com, then I’ll go to Facebook, then sometimes 37:34 Woman #1: I do the same thing. 37:34 Woman #2: I do. You do? I do it more than 3 times a day. 37:37 Woman #1: I do the same thing that you do. And every time I do it’s like, Oh, this is the way I feel when I stand in front of the refrigerator. Like Stop. Just Stop. 37:47 Woman #2: It’s really amazing. I don’t know that I like it, I’m not saying that it’s good or bad. I’m not sure … I’m not sure it’s such a great thing. | Table of food and drink
Back and forth from the women, single and plural to the inviting table
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| 37:55 Rozzo (in Italian): The risk, as I see it, is culture in capsules, information that is fragmented, divided, without having the complete vision. This can be a great risk. Particularly with audio-visual media. |
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| 38:13 Darnton: If texting, hand held devices, the Internet leads us to a world where the great mass of the population is exchanging messages all the time, but never reading, I think it would be a great pity if only professionals or a tiny elite sat down and read books through | Book covers of Lord Byron, and other literatures, shadow of hand on book page |
| 38:35 Manguel: To read in a deeper sense, to discover that somewhere, someone whom you don't know, has written a page for you describing your deepest fears, your most secret ambitions, that kind of reader is very rare - | sensual books pages turning
finger shadow on books pages |
| 38:56 Bezos: And in a 300 page book you can learn things that you can't learn from short form writing. You can almost live an entire alternate life and that's what I find I get from novels. I think I have learned more from reading novels than I have from non-fiction books | Book pages |
| 39:15 Turow: there is also a profoundly anti-democratic effect when people turn their backs on the opportunity to read. If you don’t have a citizenry that is trained to think precisely about ideas, then your democracy increasingly will be one of know-nothings. As long as people accept the illusion that they don’t have to learn to read and write well, they will essentially be locking themselves out of any opportunity to actually take the levers of power in this society. | Open book pages as if someone reading
Page of book 2+2 = 5.
Book pages flipping, coming to the end of the book. Closed |
| 40:03 Manguel: What scares me today is that we are under an avalanche of technological developments that are pushed by the industry for commercial reasons. It is the production of gadgets in order to make a financial profit. There is a question in Roman law that seems to me essential. And the question is Qui Bono, whom does this benefit? | Lots of ads of devices |
| 40:34 Wolf: We are absolutely trained, sociologically and culturally, to lurch to the next new thing without proper examination of what is being lost. I have these questions for the adult brain, but even more importantly, what is the effect on the young? | Young kids sitting on the floor in front of laptop Child playing with game |
| 40:59 Stats on screen
| 40:59 Only 5% of children ages 3-5 were read to daily by a family member. US Department of Education , 2009 41:04 Kids spend an average of 7.5 hours in front of screens for entertainment each day. 41:09 That adds up to 116 full days a year.
41:12 Percentage of children’s media consumption that comes from print: 6% Kaiser Family Foundation, 2010 |
| 41:16 Wolfman: We know that kids are spending much less time in front of books than they were, that the television had been a distraction. But now we know that the Internet has really changed the way children read, the way children communicate, the way that children spend their time. | Kids at laptop, iPhone, other gadgets
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| 41:30 Wolfman: Schools have this crucial role because, as the world changes, kids are growing up in a society that is going to be radically different than what it is today, and that’s a daunting task | School hallway, cart with laptops being wheeled
Kids in school hall, bell rings |
| 41:48 Female HS Teacher: They become so visually saturated during their off hours, when they are not involved with us during the day time ,that Great Gatsby is a movie. Fabulous. I want to watch the movie , I’m not going to read book. |
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| 41:59 Male HS Teacher: They get a book and they see that it’s this thick and they freak out , and it’s too long for them, and they immediately shut down,; they don’t want to read it |
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| 42:09 Female HS Teacher: We’re trying to teach them to appreciate the beauty of the English language and the written word. They don’t want it. They just want to suck it up like a sponge, and get it in there fast so that they can print it back out and speed it back out to us. |
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| 42:19 Male HS Teacher: They want what’s easiest and what’s quickest. They don’t want to go and actually read the material themselves. They want to go to the place where someone has already read it and summarized it for them. |
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| 42:30 College Student #1 :In college I always use Sparksnotes.com and it definitely gives me the gist of the story without reading the book. I like to read, but it’s just available to me. | Sparknotes pages |
| 42:40 HS Student #2: I haven’t read a single book this year. I just go to Sparknotes and just read summaries and I get the same grade as people that do read the book. | More web pages |
| 42:47 Darnton: It’s crucial that students read full books from cover to cover. The idea that we would somehow ditch all of our literary heritage strikes me as absurd. I can’t imagine any parent would want a student to go to a university or high school, or even an elementary school, and simply read snippets. | Book shelves
Children of all ages reading in school
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| 43:10 Seated Teacher with class: Can anyone think about, in this sequence, what is happening to (becomes inaudible) | Teacher asking question to students sitting on carpet |
| 43:15 Wesch: You know, one of the things I think is also important is that our brains are not really designed to do any of this stuff. Our brains aren’t designed to read, they are not designed to engage in online environments, so no matter what our brains are changing and they have to adapt in some way and it is an ongoing struggle.
| Kids reading books, laptops
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| 43:41 Gabrieli: We know reading has a lot of effects on cognition. It’s a portal to knowledge of every kind. Studies have been done comparing adults who are literate or who haven’t had a chance to become literate. And even tasks that don’t involve any reading are approached differently by a literate adult. They are much more comfortable with abstractions, with concepts 44:00 [Film of MRI lab: Male Technician: OK, we’re getting ready to go into the spaceship, right? And in magnets you can’t have any? Little girl: Metal. Technician: Good. I’d like to see if you have any metal. Do you have any metal on you?] 44:11 Gabrieli: A fascinating question is how the Internet and all the ways of communication, how does it change our relation to ideas, compared to a world of books and texts? The challenging thing about that is that on the one hand we know it’s got to be a hugely important, there is a total immersion for young people in that world, 44:27 [Film of MRI lab. Female technician: So this is your brain here. This is the cerebellum down here. And here is a picture this way through your brain, like this.]
44:33 Gabrieli: on the other hand scientifically incredibly hard to answer and that’s because we would have to compare one generation to another. | Entrance to McGovern Research MIT, man bike riding
Woman with cap and wires on head, test
44:00 Film, Girl going into fMRI
44:26 Film, Brain scan, woman explaining to child what the images mean
Back to fMRI |
| 44:41 Wolf: We have studied what goes on in the brain when we are multi-tasking, and you think oh it’s so much more efficient. The reality is that the brain is not parallel processing, it is moving from thing to thing to thing, it has to move its attention from thing to thing, and in the net process of knowledge gain it is actually more efficient to learn each one thing well. | Eye on computer, fMRI being studied
Kids with laptop |
| 45:13 Union Square Book Club, Woman #3: I can tell you that both of my kids have Facebook on while they are studying. Facebook is on. I’ve gotten on more than one occasion that they are discussing the work, so it is helpful to be communicating. Who’s to know if that is actually true or not.
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| 45:34 College Student #2: I get anxious when I don’t have internet. It’s sad and true. 45:39 College Student #1: I have my phone next to me. If I fall asleep and someone calls me I wake up. That’s something that’s really interesting . |
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| 45:57 Leu: We tend to think that our youngsters are digital natives that they know all of this stuff, but when it comes to information on the internet, some people refer to them as digital doofuses because they really struggle with the information. We did a study with some of the 50 best online readers who are 7th graders. Our students told us, yeah, you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet, but then we took them to a site called Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and every single one of them thought it was reliable. Every single one. | Close up of colorful game Different kids watching TV, playing games, close up of games Elisa on couch on iPhone Kids with ipods with kids covers Kids relaxing all with gadgets U. of Conn. Web site on literacies Key search Site of Tree Octopus |
| 46:37 Cooper: Where is the time for thoughtful reflection, or complex arguments? Kids are getting their information easily, but the analysis has to take place somewhere. What I worry about is that instead of analysis there is a compilation of these little bits of information and they sort of do a triage, a mental triage that is not very well thought out sometimes. I mean t hat to me is the danger. | Kids on computers web sites Classroom, kids computers
More kids, more classroom, more games. Game seen through glasses of child |
| 47:17 Wesch: That discourse goes back quite a ways. I remember when I was growing up I was part of the MTV generation [break for MTV clip] 47:30 which is the generation that couldn’t pay attention beyond four minutes because that’s how long a music video is. And now people say the same when they talk about Youtube videos. The reality is, though, we still see students engaging for long periods of time even in books. I mean it’s not that they’re reading the deepest stuff, but the Twilight series, Harry Potter, those stories are holding people’s attention, so good stories still hold people’s attentions, I think. | vintage MTV promo clip
Students writing, reading
Web pages of these books |
| 47:57 Toobin: The risk of the information age is that you will just go for a snippet of Dante rather than reading all of Dante. But you know what, the people who are going for the snippet, they probably weren’t going to read Dante anyway, so it’s better for them to have the snippet than not. |
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| 48:20 Barlow: We are at a moment in history where it is within our means to make it possible for anybody who wants to know something to learn as much as can be known by a person now. If you can give that power to the whole of humanity, why on earth would you not let that happen? If you can convey to human beings the right to know, what kind of ancestor are you if you stop it? | India, the Hole in the Wall Project video |
| 48:59 Union Square Book Club, Woman #4: We are raising children to prepare them for the world that they are going to inhabit, then this is the world they are going to inhabit. And the world they are going to inhabit is going to be asking for them to respond instantly to demands of many different people. So one of the things I think as teenagers they can learn is when there is a time to be a part of that community and be a part of that, then there is time for no screen time. And I think that’s the balance of life that they have to learn. |
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| 49:28 Union Square Book Club, Woman #1: I don’t think that we have a choice, and this is where it’s going. I mean, what can you do? Really, what can you do? |
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| 49:41 Narration: In the end, it all comes down to education. Students are the future of reading and the world of knowledge depends on their continuing to read. That means they have to be trained in critical thinking whether it applies to a book, or poetry, or scientific texts, but especially in the case of electronic sources. And the best people for the job of training them are the parents and teachers who influence their lives. | Classroom viewed through door window. Empty classroom. Kids, in school hallway
Kids in classroom working |
| 50:10 Cornelius: You know, one of the things that I think happens quite easily is that people tend to vilify the Internet and electronic media, and we can’t always do that, because it’s just a tool. You know, it’s how you use tools that are available to you. So you know like you never hear carpenters vilifying hammers; you know, they are just tools. | Classroom with Cornelius
Cornelius in front of school |
| 50:27 Arana Shapiro: So now our job as educators has changed from teaching kids how to gather information to now really understanding when you’re getting credible information. So you are not allowing kids to go for the surface, the snippets of information, but you are teaching them how to go deeper. | Classroom with teacher
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| 50:44 Leu: This may be perhaps one of the most valuable lessons we can teach our youngsters in schools, is that we don’t just want to complete an assignment, we want to really understand it, we want to use that information to think about it, to create new knowledge that might help other people along the way. | Kids working in school |
| 51:01 Bryce: We embrace the mindset as a society that says that if the parents are consumers then the children are products. The teachers need to turn out a quality product. It just isn’t a useful way to look at kids. | In his classroom/lab |
| 51:18 Neveen Mourad: Personally I feel my job is really important being an English teacher, because that really is the tool you are giving them to access anything else they want. | Teacher in classroom |
| 51:28 Darnton: If you can expose the student to a world of books then that student will forever get it and continue to read books. | Teacher reading Faces engaged Kids reading |
| 51:38 Manguel: What gives me hope for the future of reading are the young people who come to me from time to time and say “I have discovered this extraordinary writer called Hemingway. Do you know him?” And those are marvelous moments that happen again and again in every generation. | Reading and reading on everything |
| 51:58 Turow: I don’t worry that people will lose interest in a 400-page book. I believe in diversity and choice. Let people choose. Everybody will find a place as long as a diverse environment exists. | Readers Books
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| 52:17 Toobin: I don’t care that people read books. I care that people read, and if they read it on a carbon byproduct or a Kindle or a computer screen that doesn’t particularly matter to me. What matters is the intellectual engagement, not the technology. | Reading on print, kindle, etc. |
| 52:38 Wolf: The best thing you can do for your child’s future reading is to read to them from the first moment that they are in your lap, under the crook of an arm. Nothing is better for the development of concepts and language -- and they never let you skip a page. | Baby being read to. He is cooing, engaged in the book Kids in hallway Reading books |
| 53:01 Cornelius: You know, in my classroom, like it’s not an option to not be a reader. Of course that means I have to have lots of arguments with 13-year olds, and of course that means that some people give me evil looks because I’m making them read, but if I had a classroom where I allowed people to get away with not reading, then that’s on me, that’s not on kids. (Laughs). | Cornelius in classroom Kids reading Cornelius in front of school Books slam shut after we see the page with chapter heading: The Last Act |
| 53:27 Credits |
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| Post Credit 54:39 Bezos: It will be magic to me if you manage to make sense of all this, but it will be appreciated. (laughs) |
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