"Printed books do more than furnish a room; they assume a real, vital presence in our lives."

The Future of the Humanities: Reading

As technology advances, doomsaying remains constant.

By Michael Dirda | HUMANITIES, November/December 2015 | Volume 36, Number 6

"Above all, no digital facsimile can ever replicate the mana, the glamour of a physical artifact. An online image of Van Gogh’s Starry Night hardly conveys the impact, the glory of the actual painting. In like fashion, first editions aren’t just a collector’s fetish: The dust jacket, the binding, the advertisements and blurbs, and even the misprints convey useful information. Printed books do more than furnish a room; they assume a real, vital presence in our lives. We can casually pluck a volume from a bookcase, reread a poem or a few pages of a novel, find ourselves comforted, refreshed."