-
I will lend books to people,
but of course, the rule is
-
"Don't do that unless you never
intend to see that book again."
-
[Small thing.]
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[Big idea.]
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The physical object of a book
is almost like a person.
-
I mean, it has a spine
and it has a backbone.
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It has a face.
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Actually, it can sort of be your friend.
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Books record the basic human experience
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like no other medium can.
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Before there were books,
-
ancient civilizations would record things
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by notches on bones
or rocks or what have you.
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The first books as we know them
originated in ancient Rome.
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We go by a term called the codex,
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where they would have
two heavy pieces of wood
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which become the cover,
-
and then the pages in between
would then be stitched along one side
-
to make something that was relatively
easily transportable.
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They all had to completely
be done by hand,
-
which became the work
of what we know as a scribe.
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And frankly, they were luxury items.
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And then a printer
named Johannes Gutenberg,
-
in the mid-fifteenth century,
created the means to mass-produce a book,
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the modern printing press.
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It wasn't until then
-
that there was any kind of consumption
of books by a large audience.
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Book covers started to come into use
in the early nineteenth century,
-
and they were called dust wrappers.
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They usually had advertising on them.
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So people would take them off
and throw them away.
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It wasn't until the turn of the nineteenth
into the twentieth century
-
that book jackets could be seen
as interesting design
-
in and of themselves.
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Such that I'd look at that and I'd think,
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"I want to read that.
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That interests me."
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The physical book itself represents
both a technological advance
-
but also a piece of technology
in and of itself.
-
It delivered a user interface
-
that was unlike anything
that people had before.
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And you could argue
that it's still the best way
-
to deliver that to an audience.
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I believe that the core purpose
of a physical book
-
is to record our existence
-
and to leave it behind
on a shelf in a library, in a home,
-
for generations down the road
to understand where they came from,
-
that people went through
some of the same things
-
that they're going through,
-
and it's like a dialogue
that you have with the author.
-
I think you have a much more human
relationship to a printed book
-
than you do to one that's on a screen.
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People want the experience of holding it,
-
of turning the page,
of marking their progress in a story.
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And then you have, of all things,
the smell of a book.
-
Fresh ink on paper
or the aging paper smell.
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You don't really get that
from anything else.
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The book itself, you know,
can't be turned off with a switch.
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It's a story that you can
hold in your hand
-
and carry around with you
-
and that's part of what makes
them so valuable,
-
and I think will make them valuable
for the duration.
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A shelf of books, frankly,
-
is made to outlast you, (Laughs)
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no matter who you are.