The book is like the spoon: once invented, it cannot be bettered' - Umberto Eco.
These days it is impossible to get away from discussions of whether the book wi
ll survive the digital revolution. Blogs, tweets and newspaper articles on the s
ubject appear daily, many of them repetitive, most of them admitting ignorance o
f the future.
Amidst the twittering, the thoughts of Jean-Claude Carriere and
Umberto Eco come as a breath of fresh air. This thought-provoking book takes th
e form of a conversation in which Carriere and Eco discuss everything from how t
o define the first book to what is happening to knowledge now that infinite amou
nts of information are available at the click of a mouse. En route there are del
ightful digressions into personal anecdote.
We find out about Eco's first com
puter and the book Carriere is most sad to have sold. And while, as Carriere say
s, the one certain thing about the future is that it is unpredictable, it is cle
ar from this conversation that, in some form or other, the book will survive.
