Frequently I think that our societies will be split in a short time (or they are already split) into two

classes of citizens: those who only watch TV, who will receive pre-fabricated images and therefore

prefabricated definitions of the world, without any power to critically choose the kind of information

they receive, and those who know how to deal with the computer, who will be able to select and to

elaborate information. This will re-establish the cultural division which existed at the time of Claude

Frollo, between those who were able to read manuscripts, and therefore to critically deal with religious,

scientifical or philosophical matters, and those who were only educated by the images of the cathedral,

selected and produced by their masters, the literate few.

A science fiction writer could elaborate a lot on a future world where a majority of proletarians will

receive only visual communication planned by an élite of computer-literate people.

There are two sorts of books: these to be read and these to be consulted.

As far as books-to-read are concerned (they can be a novel, or a philosophical treatise, or a sociological

analysis, and so on) the normal way of reading them is the one that I would call the detective-like story.

You start from page 1, where the author tells you that a crime has been committed, you follow every

path of the detection until the end, and finally you discover that the guilty one was the butler. End of the

book and end of your reading experience. Remark that the same happens even if you read, let us say,

Descartes' Discourse de la methode. The author wanted you to open the book at its first page, to follow

the series of questions he proposed, to see how he reaches certain final conclusions. Certainly, a

scholar, who already knows that book, can re-read it by jumping from one page to another, trying to

isolate a possible link between a statement of the first chapter and one of the last one... A scholar can

also decide to isolate, let us say, every occurrence of the word Jerusalem in the immense opus of

Thomas Aquinas, thus skipping thousands of pages in order to focus his or her own attention on the

only passages dealing with Jerusalem... But these are ways of reading that the layman would consider

as unnatural.

Then there are the books to be consulted, like handbooks and encyclopedias. Sometimes handbooks

must be read from the beginning to the end; but when one knows the matter enough, one can consult

them, so selecting also certain chapters or passages. When I was in high-school I had to read entirely,

in a linear way, my handbook on mathematics; today, if I need a precise definition of logarithm, I only

consult it. I keep it on my shelves not to read and re-read it every day, but in order to keep it up once in

ten years, to find the item I need to consult it about.

Encyclopedias are conceived in order to be always consulted and never read from the first to the last

page. Usually one pick up a given volume of one's encyclopedia to know or to remember when

Napoleon died or what is the formula of sulfuric acid. Scholars use encyclopedias in a more

sophisticated way. For instance, if I want to know whether it was possible or not that Napoleon met

Kant, I have to pick up the volume K and the wolume N of my encyclopedia: I discover that Napolen

was born in 1769 and died in 1821, Kant was born in 1724 and died in 1804, when Napoleon was

already emperor. It is not impossible that the two met. I have probably to consult a biography of Kant,

or of Napoleon - but in a short biography of Napoleon, who met so many persons in his life, this

possible meeting with Kant can be disregarded, while a in a biography of Kant a meeting with Napoleon

should be recorded. In brief, I must leaf through many books in many shelves of my library, I must

take notes in order to compare later all the data I collected, and so on. In short, all this will cost to me a

painful physical labor.

With a hypertext, instead, I can navigate through the whole encyclopedia. I can connect an event

registered at the beginning with a series of similar events disseminated all along the text, I can compare

the beginning with the end, I can ask for the list of all the words beginning by A, I can ask for all the

cases in which the name of Napoleon is linked with the one of Kant, I can compare the dates of their

birth and death - in short, I can do my job in few seconds or few minutes.

Hypertexts will certainly render obsolete encyclopedias and handbooks. In few Cd-roms (probably

soon in a single one) it is possible to store more information than in the whole Encyclopedia Britannica,

with the advantage that it permits crossed references and non-linear retrieval of information. The whole

of the compact disks , plus the computer, will occupy one fifth of the space occupied by an

encyclopedia. The encyclopedia cannot be transported as the CD-ROM can, the encyclopedia cannot

be easily updated. The shelves today occupied, at my home as well as in public libraries, by meters and

meters of encyclopedia could be eliminated in the next future, and there will be no reasons to complain

for their disappearance.

Can a hypertextual disk replace the books to be read? This question conceals in fact two different

problems and could be rephrased as two different questions.

(I) First, a practical one: Can some electronic support replace the books-to-read?

(II) Second an theoretical and an esthetical one: Can a hypertextual and multimedial CD-ROM transform

the very nature of a book-to-read, such as a novel or a collection of poems?

Let me first answer the first question.

Books will remain indispensable not only for literature, but for any circumstance in which one needs to

read carefully, not only to receive information but also to speculate and to reflect about it. To read a

computer screen is not the same as to read a book. Think to the process of learning a new computer

program. Usually the program is able to display on the screen all the instructions you need. But usually

the users who want to learn the program either print the instructions and read them as if they were in

book form, or they buy a printed manual (let me underevaluate the fact that presently all the computer's

Helps are clearly written by irresponsible and tautological idiots, while commercial handbooks are

written by smart people). It is possible to conceive of a visual program that explains very well how to

print and bind a book, but in order to get instructions on how to write (or how to use) a computer

program, we need a printed handbook.

After having spent no more than 12 hours at a computer console, my eyes are like two tennis balls, and

I feel the need of sitting comfortably down in an armchair and reading a newspaper, and maybe a good

poem. I think that computers are diffusing a new form of literacy but are incapable of satisfying all the

intellectual needs they are stimulating.

In my hours of optimism I dream of a computer generation which, compelled to read a computer

screen, gets acquainted with reading, but at a certain moment feels unsatisfied and looks for a different,

more relaxed and differently-committing form of reading.

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