Holding out against the internet
Lloyd Evans 5:13pm
There’s a great post on the Telegraph website highlighting 50 things the internet is killing off. Hand-writing, desk diaries, things like that. But what about those precious activities and institutions the internet was supposed to destroy and hasn’t? Here are six to get the ball rolling:
Bookshops
Each time I pass a bookshop, especially the second-hand variety, I feel I ought to go in. Not because I want a book but because I’ve convinced myself that this treasured resource is about to be wiped from the earth. So in I go – or try to. I can’t get past the heaving crush of people like me making a final mercy-dash to the stricken victim. Such is the demand for books that Oxfam has had to demerge its branches into two varieties – the books-only Oxfam and the books-and-dead-people’s-clothes Oxfam.
Bookshops are thriving, precisely because of the web. The internet is a pocket memento mori. Life is too brief, it reminds us, to spend all our time on-line. Get out there! Meanwhile the resurgent bookshops are busy upgrading themselves. They have sofas, mango juice, fresh coffee, jazz nights, aerobics, poetry readings, speeding-dating, foxy Danish students working the till. If you look hard enough you may even find some books.
Telephone calls
In the 1970s, when I was a kid, we took it for granted that within two decades or so the landline would have evolved into the wrist-watch video-phone as used by the chaps on Thunderbirds. Doubtless that technology has been created by now but it’s going nowhere. The good old audio-phone is what we want. Its combination of concealment and disclosure is perfect. It enables the caller to present himself exactly as he chooses. I can be unshaven, hungover, coked-up, and in bed with a rent-boy and I can call the Dalai Lama to discuss progressive ecumenicalism and he will never know my true circumstances. Likewise I will never know that he too is unshaven, hungover, coked-up and in bed with a rent-boy. The telephone is the dissembler’s instrument of choice. It’s here to stay.
Green campaigners on jets
There’s really no need for eco-lobbyists to get on the plane in order to tell us to get off the plane. Spreading the panic on-line is easier, cheaper and quicker. It would satisfy moral logic too and make it harder for anyone to complain that greens don’t practise what they preach, they just preach. So, any chance of the planet-savers grounding themselves and confining their crusade to the keyboard? Nope. Flying’s not just about convenience. Soaring into the stratosphere on a trans-Atlantic trajectory boosts the ego tremendously, it makes one feel potent, magnificent and world-conquering. That’s what the greens want.
Live debates
The sheer volume of false, inaccurate and paranoid opinions swarming across the internet has fostered a desire for the exact opposite – informed views exchanged in a rational atmosphere. Mind you, the best place to find live debates is on the internet. It has its uses.
Newspapers
Still here and still doing OK. Most of them anyway. The long-awaited death of Fleet Street has been postponed for all kinds of peculiar small-scale reasons. We need a physical relationship with our newsprint. We need to fold and smooth, we need to squint from odd angles. Sometimes we need to snack as we take our morning news-hit. I can eat Cheesy Wotsits while reading the Indie but if I eat Cheesy Wotsits while surfing the net my keys get covered in gunk. It’s horrible. And I sometimes read the paper while watching TV, (the local news, perhaps, or during the fag-end of Match of the Day while the bottom-rung Premiership games are being shown), but surfing while watching telly? I’d never do that. And think of the Sunday papers. The internet will never replicate the unique social and cultural utility of a Sunday rag, with its myriad chunky ‘sections’, spreading and sprawling across the rooms of a country-house during a rainy weekend.
Meetings
There’s no need. It shouldn’t ever happen. Ever again. Three men in a room? Why? Hook up over the web and have a split-screen video conference. Time, money and hassle – all saved. But no one does it. We need face-to-face. There’s something in us that craves proximity, adjacency. We like to examine skin-quality, paunch-size and lip-contour. We like to grade and assess iris-hue and follicle-density. We like lunch too. If it were possible to download a rump-steak and a litre of valpolicella and divide it three ways over the internet ‘the meeting’ might be under threat. Meanwhile, see you at Luigi’s.
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Peter from Maidstone
September 11th, 2009 5:32pm Report this commentMostly I agree. Except I do some meetings online because it is too expensive and too much hassle to fly to Helsinki for a one hour meeting.
I do buy loads more real books now that I can much more easily find the obscure Orthodox theological titles that interest me, and can even read much of the content online.
Jeremy
September 11th, 2009 7:20pm Report this commentNewspapers:
And don't forget that you can actually hide behind a newspaper. The raised broadsheet is the perfect way of cutting yourself off from the dodgy looking people sitting opposite. And what might otherwise be regarded as antisocial behaviour is automatically excused by the fact that - ta-daaa! - you are "reading a newspaper". In fact, behind the open broadsheet you could be feverishly at work, building a complete lego model of a deadly Space Robot, and nobody need ever know. The internet cannot possibly hope to replace the social usefulness of the newspaper.
"The internet will never replicate the unique social and cultural utility of a Sunday rag, with its myriad chunky â˜sectionsâ™, spreading and sprawling across the rooms of a country-house during a rainy weekend."
You convey the aesthetics of the thing perfectly. Although I have learned to loath the Murdochs, I have to concede that The Sunday Times used to be the best for the scenario that you describe. However, in recent years both the news and culture sections have "gone off", and so I no longer bother with it.
Bookshops:
There's no doubt that Oxfam is excellent for books - especially, I have found, for plays. You can pick up a Shakespeare or some Wilde for less than the cover price of most magazines. I dare say this point has not been lost upon the consumer.
However, I have also noticed that a fair few of the pricier secondhand bookshops have vacated their premises. And I assume that this is because of competition from the internet. The fact of the matter is that you can buy most books for less on Amazon or ebay, and this has undoubtedly impacted upon the book trade, both secondhand and new. I suspect that many booksellers have simply shut down their shops, therebye cutting their overheads, and transferred their trade to the internet.
But then we come to the question of aesthetics, which I think has much to do with the physical presence of the book. The internet cannot give you this. I notice, for example, that when visiting Waterstone's I am still very tempted to buy books - and occasionally do so - in spite of the fact that I know I can get them cheaper online. Why? Because there is no substitute for the actual physical presence of the book in your hand. If the design is good, if the book has been handsomely produced in the way that - it seems - only British books are; if you can see, by reading a bit of it in the shop, that it has been well-written and, most importantly, is on a subject that you are in any case interested in, then the (sometimes) overwhelming temptation is to buy the thing; in spite of the fact that you may be paying more for it at the bookshop than you would online. At this level, I think, it is about the immediate gratification of overwhelming desire, in which the book plays the role of seducer.
"The sheer volume of false, inaccurate and paranoid opinions swarming across the internet has fostered a desire for the exact opposite â“ informed views exchanged in a rational atmosphere."
And, yes, the well-written book by the credible author, edited by somebody who knows the meaning of the word and published by the authoritative publishing house will always carry more substance and authority than some manipulative disinformation that you happen to have picked up online. I cannot see that changing. If you want real information, then you go to books for it.
Telephone calls:
What you wrote about the telephone is absolutely true - that it provides the perfect combination of "concealment and disclosure". The same is true of the email. And that's why neither will be superceded by "the split-screen video conference" or whatever. Who wants to see what they look like, anyway? And who wants them looking at you? Plus the email grants you the authority of print. The spoken word is written on the wind. And the recorded word has to be laboriously played back. But print...well, they'll never be able to replace it, will they?
John Page
September 11th, 2009 7:58pm Report this commentDid you have to say that about the Dalai Lama? Aren't newspapers losing money?
terence patrick hewett
September 11th, 2009 9:05pm Report this commentThe Spectator's online content is going behind a Paywall, which is what this patronising little piece is all about.
Jamie
September 11th, 2009 9:24pm Report this commentLong live newspapers. I cannot imagine reading the internet at breakfast alongside tea, toast and marmalade. And an egg, boiled for six minutes.
Tiberius
September 11th, 2009 9:29pm Report this commentTwo fervent "Whats!" to this piece.
Email and text messaging are far more satisfactory means of routine communication. They take all the uncertainty out of the discourse. Phones are for emergencies nowadays.
And there is absolutely no reason not to watch TV while surfing on the laptop. The evening Boris won the mayoral election was spent watching the unfolding victory while in touch with Coffee House. I can't wait for GE night, when a plentiful supply of Ruddles County will be on hand.
Archie Wedderspoon
September 12th, 2009 2:22am Report this commentWhy do I buy a copy of the Spectator every week, when I can read it over the net? I don't know exactly, but the physical presence of the thing definitely makes a difference.
Tanuki
September 12th, 2009 4:56pm Report this commentTo be honest, I haven't read a newspaper for a decade. Haven't actually *bought* one for a couple of decades. By the time news makes it to print it's already been on TV for 12 hours and the Web for eighteen - which means there's precious little 'news' in newspapers (perhaps they should rename them historypapers?).
Phone-calls are the same: my phones are always diverted-to-voicemail precisely because I resent the crass rudeness of that intrusive bell or warble. Leave a message - tell me what you want and if I can do it/when I have the relevant information at my fingertips I'll call you back (or text you or email you) when it's convenient.
As to bookshops - well, Amazon's amazing in its ability to provide me with sensibly-priced secondhand tomes you'll never actually find in a high-street bookshop. If I want coffee I'll go to a proper coffee-shop, not a bookshop that serves coffee on the side.
Fergus Pickering
September 12th, 2009 6:10pm Report this commentYou can buy books cheap on the internet, but by the time they have posted them to you they are no longer cheap. I buy my books at the oxfam shop in Canterbury and a splendid second hand shop in Whitstable - good paperbacks 95p and he'll take them off you again for 30p.
Peter from Maidstone
September 13th, 2009 9:41am Report this commentFergus, I pay about £40 a year to Amazon to be in their Prime package. It means I get free next day delivery on everything. It works out much cheaper even than their already cheap prices and means I can buy books and other goods when I want and not worry about postage at all.
THX1138
September 13th, 2009 4:34pm Report this commentPeter from Maidstone- I get Amazon Prime for free.
I just Gore Vidal The Last Empire for 1p on Amazon and the postage was a lot less than the petrol and parking.
THX1139
September 14th, 2009 1:13pm Report this commentPeter from Maidstone- Amazon pay me to use Prime.
They just the original copy of the Bible (God had signed it herself) for 1p and also gave me a free perpetual motion/alchemy machine.
Sory for teh typo's but I just had to post this seemingly irrelevant information really quickly so you would know how achingly culturally resonant I am.
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