I have a large and beautiful Special Fourth Edition copy of the American Heritage Dictionary. While making a post this morning, I was going to use Bartleby to look something up, but I paused, walked across the room, and lovingly opened the pages of my Dictionary.
I am a blogger, a technologist, and an engineer. I have two news aggregators, laptops, digital music systems, GPSs, MP3 players, pen-sized digital scanners. I have hundreds of newsfeeds, use all of Google's features, read dozens of online journals regularly, have virtual mail folders and dozens of email addresses. I am an early adopter by anyone's definition.
A lot of people and companies are reshaping our world using the Internet and the computer. A lot of people see that the future is digital and it will replace everything. If they really want to succeed in transforming our world in a human and practical way, every single one of them to ponder...
Why do I still so enjoy using my Dictionary?
For me, there is something intimately satisfying about paging through a volume like a dictionary or a Brewers to find what you are after. It reminds us of simpler (?) times. I think mostly in the way we always exaggerate the essential 'goodness' of the past.
Certainly I usually find I find I use an online dictionary, thesaurus, or encyclopedia more often than not. But, I do derive enjoyment form the visceral pleasure of obtaining information with my bare hands, as it were.
There is a scene in season 2 of Buffy. A burgeoning romance is arising between Giles, Buffys Watcher and school librarian, and the rather sassy computer science teacher. It becomes clear he has a dislike for computers (eg '...wrest some information from these infernal machines...'). Eventually she asks him why. His response (which I will shamefully paraphrase) had a ring of truth and reality for me, even though I am definitely also a technologist at heart. He said: Its the smell. Computers have no smell. Books have the smell of paper and old leather which you associate with their knowledge.
I think I get that. And as with so many things in Joss Whedon shows its a brief couple of lines in a dense script that for some reasons talks to us/me more than perhaps was intended. Using a dictionary (and yours in an excellent example of the species) is a full sensual experience. The smell of the paper, the feel of the pages and the binding, the weight of it in your hands, the visual scannign across the lines and columns of text. And when you finally find the word you were searching for, you have experienced so much more in that search. Its all about the journey, I guess. Like Apocalypse Now with a book.
I think its also an appreciation for craftsmanship which you dont get doing a web search or similar. For some reason that doesnt really translate.
Well, thats enough from me. I need to go look something up.
Posted by: Ross Mack | June 10, 2005 at 11:53 AM
I still use my Merriam-Webster Dictionary from 1974 - it's in two pieces now, but it's always there for me.
It also has a variety, or, as my daughter would say, "random" stuff in the back...such as the June 1, 1971 estimated population of Canada (technically, a country) by province and territory.
My Webster's dictionary still does the job. It doesn't have the word necrophilia in it, but that doesn't bother me so much now as it did when I was twelve.
Posted by: Alen | June 11, 2005 at 11:27 PM