A Fiery Rebirth?

The fiery phoenix is best known for its ability to regenerate itself from its own ashes.  Consider this: last week I noticed that the famous Virgin Megastore at Union Square is closing (it probably has been closed as I write this).  In the dozens of times I’ve wandered that store I’ve never seen it empty.  It’s been wall to wall with customers buying CDs (or, at least, browsing).  But the death of the CD and the rise of other forms of media (iTunes, mp3, etc.) have caused CD sales to drop precipitously so that giant megastores like Virgin cannot survive.  That same day I had spent several hours browsing the giant Barnes & Noble bookstore across the park at Union Square.  Its five stories of books seems, at first blush, as permanent as the Virgin Megastore once seemed.  The aisles are crowded with book browsers.  But with the rise of the e-reader and other forms of content distribution, it’s pretty much inevitable that the paper book will soon be an obsoleted thing.  I remember my friend’s brother’s eight track tapes: bulky, strange, antiquated things.  Refuse from another generation.  My niece and nephew (7 and 3) might one day think the same way of paper books.

Then today I read this Wired post from Bruce Sterling and the supposed challenges contemporary literature will have to face.  If print is soon to be dead, what new, wondrous things might arise like the phoenix from its ashes?  The convergence of media, from video games and television and online content into one vast electronic whirl of noise, might lead into new forms of creative expression we have yet to imagine.

But where does that leave us, humble writers of traditional short stories & novels (traditional in the sense of being told purely in text)?  Personally, I do not believe that the written word will vanish simply because of the glut of available media.  Stories are a part of human culture too and will never go away.  But the way in which such stories are delivered will undoubtedly change, and do so rapidly in the next decade.  Wise and prescient storytellers might capitilize on this new model, but what if I want to be old-fashioned and write a textual novel?  In 2050, will people sit down to read their favorite book by e-reader?  Or will content be so balkanized, rehashed, user-generated by then that the novel as we know it will be essentially dead?  Someone tell me please because a part of me is quite scared.  The other part is quite excited.