DURHAM -- Is the Internet making us stupid? That question, raised in a 2008 Atlantic Monthly article, probably should be answered with a resounding "no."
Earlier this year, UCLA announced a study that seemed to prove that Internet "surfing" actually supports healthy brain function as we age. Making decisions about what links to follow and processing the information we discover apparently triggers key brain centers that need exercise.
But even if the Internet is not actually making us stupid, maybe it has negative effects on reading and comprehension. The Atlantic Monthly article was asserting that we are losing our ability to focus on sustained arguments or narratives. Even if the Internet isn't bad for our brains per se, it must be bad for books and reading, right?
Google is betting heavily that books will survive on the Internet with its project to digitize millions of books and make then available online. However, publishers and authors have sued Google's book-scanning project for copyright infringement. The negotiations between the two parties, and the different versions of a settlement agreement that have emerged from them, will go a long way to shape how we find and read books in the digital age.
The Internet is a much more text-dependent and interactive medium than television, so we may see a rebirth of reading, at least of a sort. And remember, there have always been dire predictions about how some new technology would imperil the foundations of human thought and society.
In his Seventh Letter, written about 360 B.C.E., the Greek philosopher Plato (or perhaps one of his students) predicted that the "new" technology of writing would undermine human memory and have the distressing effect of placing serious ideas before the unworthy masses. Sounds a lot like what we now hear about the Internet.
Similar predictions have arisen around every new technology for communicating ideas. John Philip Sousa argued passionately that musical recording would be the end of human singing, and Jack Valenti (then president of the Motion Picture Association of America) compared the video recorder to the Boston Strangler in its anticipated effect on the movie business. Both predictions were spectacularly wrong.
The Google Books project, however, really focuses on a narrower question about how we will read entire books online. Even here we should be wary of predictions. But it seems safe to say that online books and portable book readers will coexist with the printed book, just as records and DVDs coexist with radio, concerts and big-screen movies.
Technologies seldom replace older markets, although they often create new ones. Right now, the market for online reading and book distribution is very unsettled. Libraries and bookstores are experimenting with both online delivery of books and with portable book readers, neither of which has proved wholly satisfactory as yet. But even as portable book readers become more practical and comfortable, the market for online books may be moving toward "smart phones."
Meanwhile, Google has made approximately 7 million books available online, either in full-text or as "snippets." While people may not choose to read entire books on a laptop or desktop screen, the value of the Google Books Search as a way to locate the right book for a particular need is clear.
As negotiations to settle the copyright infringement lawsuit proceed, we are learning how both technological and legal structures affect our use of online books. Whether we can print pages from the books we find using Google, or download them onto our laptops, or transfer them to our iPhones, and how much each service will cost, will depend on the technology that is available and the legal agreement that is reached.
Applying copyright laws to new technologies has always been difficult and cumbersome. Google and the publishers and authors with whom it is negotiating are using a copyright dispute as the springboard for a private agreement that will have profound effects on the technological and legal environment for online books and reading. All we can really do right now is hope they guess right about our future.
Kevin Smith is an attorney and the scholarly communications officer for the Duke University Libraries who is an expert on copyright law.
