~ Frances Kitson
What do we lose with the passing of the encyclopaedia? That’s the question that I’ve been musing on since seeing the preview of Relephant Theatre’s The Exquisite Hour, on at the Revue Stage on Granville Island till May 12.
Here’s the premise: on a summer evening in 1962, Zach is relaxing in his backyard, drinking his slightly spiked lemonade, when Mrs. Darimont shows up to sell him a compendium of encyclopaedias. To demonstrate their benefit, she’s brought along the “H” volume, and for the next hour, Zack discovers facts about St. Hubert, Hannibal, Swabian nobility, and other such useful subjects. He then puts that newfound knowledge to use through a series of improvised roleplaying scenarios with Mrs. Darimont, improving his ability to talk to charming young ladies. It’s quirky and charming and solid Lemoinian writing, and it got me all nostalgic for a time when encyclopaedias were still relevant.
I bet I’m not the only one who’s had a conversation that goes something like this:
“Oh, I really like that actor! I know I’ve seen her in something else, but I can’t remember what it was.” “Wait a second – I’ll Google her on my iPhone!” (Does one capitalize “Google” when using it as a verb? Hmmm.)
And boom – we have our answer. There’s something intoxicating about being able to find the answer to a question right at the moment of asking. Thanks to your Smartphone, you don’t have to wait to get home and look it up – you can look it up as soon as it occurs to you.
I don’t like that.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m guilty of it myself (I don’t have an iPhone, but I’ve looked up plenty of irrelevant topics at work). And I fully recognise the handiness of being able to look up bus schedules when you discover that the SkyTrain isn’t going any further and the night bus doesn’t start running for another hour and it’s pouring rain.
But the giddy and instant gratification of being able to google something (I’ve decided that the capital G only applies to the noun) the moment you think of it is part of our general reduction of concentration span. Witness the thought process: “Question – ooh! Look it up on iPhone! – Ah, that’s what it is – Oh look, I’ve got a text message – Hey, I wonder what the weather is for tomorrow…” etc. Versus: “Question – make note to myself to look that up when I get home – go back to what I was doing.”
The information that you wanted was on a tangible printed page, and you had to go to the actual book itself and look up your answer. (If you bothered at all, of course. And I also bet there’s a lot of families out there whose cherished encyclopaedias served only to flatten leaves.) There was an effort involved, however minor, and the answer was to be had in a physical object.
So there are two aspects of this for me: the lack of instant gratification (if I want to know the answer, I have to go find it rather than having it at my fingertips), and the physical nature of the information (it’s been printed onto a page that I can touch).
That physical part is important for me: when I’m proofing essays and scripts and the like, at a certain point I have to print them up. I know it’s paper, and I know that paper used to be a tree, but my brain just cannot process information that it has read off a screen the same way that it can off a page. (And as e-textbooks become more common, I would be fascinated to know two things: 1) what research is being done about which neurons fire up when reading off the different media and how our brain processes the information gathered, and 2) how many people will simply print up the e-textbooks?!)
But there’s a third thing: there is something about information that stays put. The entry for “Ibex” is going to be the same tomorrow as it was today, and the same next week, and the same until the next edition of the encyclopaedia comes out. I find that restful. I know, I know – attempting to research your Grade Four project on Saskatchewan was frustrating when the underfunded school library had an encyclopaedia that was ten years old. But there is something solid about something that is physically printed and will stay that way, instead of being a virtual entity, floating out there in cyberspace and changing in some e-netherworld without you understanding exactly how it happened.
I don’t know what the appeal of that is to me, except that I might simply be someone who prefers the world to move slowly, or I might be a very tactile person who prefers to work with physical objects (as I wryly note the irony of typing virtual text onto a computer screen).
Attempting to shove the genie back in the bottle is futile and impossible and undesirable. There are many enormous benefits to the information superhighway, and it’s all relative: I’m certain that people in 1962 lamented the fast pace of modern life and pined for the day when people weren’t huddled around TV sets and there were still morning and evening editions of the newspaper. I’ve also no doubt that folks in 2062 will pine for the days of 2012, when people… well, I don’t know what. Maybe typing itself will become obsolete. Maybe I won’t even have to make that physical effort; maybe I’ll just talk to my monitor which by then won’t even be a monitor, but something different. Maybe I won’t even have to talk, I’ll just look at it and it will detect the energy of my gaze and respond accordingly.
Besides, the printing press itself was greeted with outrage, fear and suspicion. It was feared that the press would destroy the art and craftsmanship that all these monks were putting into their copying work, and would disseminate information to who-knows-what kind of rabble, putting all sorts of dangerous ideas into the heads of great and ignorant unwashed.
I hope we’re not about to see the demise of the printed word, but I don’t think the trend is favourable. The reason you see more stationery and bonbons and cushions and scalp massagers and water bottles in Chapters these days is because the book sales, frankly, are down. (Whether that’s because book sales are down everywhere or because of Amazon – which I have been boycotting ever since Wikileaks – I don’t know.)
I’m not about to go out and buy myself a compendium of encyclopaedias, and I’m not likely to stop googling (I’ve decided that one only capitalizes the proper name) random subjects or looking them up on Wikipedia. I’m just going to try to avoid doing it on impulse or as an avoidance technique, and I’m going to try staying focused on tasks at hand.
And sometimes, I’m just going to turn the damn computer off and go read a book.