Respect Authority

Matches made in Hell.

History has a long record of ill-advised combinations: highlighter pens (seriously, the highlighter always dries out first), Nickelodeon’s Cat Dog; Jon and Kate and any sort of televised event. But never has a collaboration offended me like the “vook,” a Simon & Schuster creation designed to destroy intelligence and literacy worldwide.

“Vooks” are video-books, or e-books with videos interspersed throughout, which can be read (and viewed) online. Or an iPhone, since I’m pretty sure iPhones do everything short of microwaving food these days. Though S&S is the first publisher to tout its vooks publicly, the idea is spreading—several imprints have announced plans to incorporate video into readers’ experience, either through electronic devices or on the Internet.

What. the. fuck. Listen, I’ve accepted the Kindle. I’m not a fan per se; the purist ink-loving tree destroyer in me wants to read paper books until the day I keel over with one in my hands. But I’m willing to accept that the Kindle might have an iPod-like effect on the nation’s potential readers: ubiquity. As in, maybe if we distract them with gadgetry, thousands of Americans, otherwise glued to syndicated reruns of Jerry Springer, might pick up an actual (or virtual) book.

But my acceptance was contingent on that - the book part. The reading part. Not mixing in video, thereby eliminating the one place we still take in and process words without the help of any sort of imagery.  Not perpetuating the notion that there’s no harm in losing the ability to focus on one thing for a sustained period of time. Not sacrificing essential cognitive tools for the purposes of flash.

Seriously, I hope we do invent robots that surpass us in intelligence, destroy us, and rule the world.

[NY Times]