[B]ooks have been turned into databases. They are no longer texts to be read, understood, pondered, and possibly enjoyed, meditated upon, or discussed but files containing data. As texts are turned into pixels, books have become simultaneously images and index: collections of photographs of pages and of disconnected units that we still call words.
Cécile Alduy
Assistant Professor of French
Standford University
Letter to the Editor, New Yorker, 12/10/2007
What, honestly, is the ontological difference between drops of ink on paper and "pixels" on a screen? It is an aesthetic difference, to be sure, but nothing prevents either from being "read, understood, etc.". Those things "we still call words" are words if they are produced on a press, displayed on a screen, or scrawled in sand along a beach. They mean exactly the same thing regardless of medium or form.
Now, certainly, form can contribute to meaning. A sculpture is entirely different from a photograph of a sculpture. But for the letter-writer, is the only way to truly understand Madame Bovary, then, to read Flaubert's original hand-written manuscript? Or would a first edition printed book suffice? What about a modern Penguin paperback? Those are all forms of "text", but they each have different weights and sizes, use different typefaces, and have different cover art. I infer from her screed that those physical attributes are somehow important to understanding the meaning of the work. Or are all those variations minor and insignificant provided the text of the book is not "turned into pixels"?
Again, I like books. I think books are great. But Assistant Professors who commit egregious epistemic fallacies in prestigious popular magazines really get my dander up!
What you said, plus this: ICK.
God, it's good to be out of grad school.