James Gleick wrote a op-ed about books, physicality and publishing in the New York Times. He writes, “As a technology, the book is like a hammer. That is to say, it is perfect: a tool ideally suited to its task. Hammers can be tweaked and varied but will never go obsolete.” This succinctly sums up the relationship between two of my passions- books and tools. He ends with a charge to those who make books, “Go back to an old-fashioned idea: that a book, printed in ink on durable paper, acid-free for longevity, is a thing of beauty. Make it as well as you can. People want to cherish it.”
As I read somewhere once, if books hadn’t existed and someone came up with the concept today, even in this technological era, it’d be hailed as an extraordinary innovation.