Last night I was fortunate enough to go to my first event at the new Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas, now known as The Wheeler Centre. The professional looking space is on the Little Lonsdale Street side of the State Library and the interior is overlaid with modern fixtures whilst not disturbing the old architecture.

It was the opening event of Meanland, a collaboration between Overland and its editor, Jeff Sparrow, and Meanjin and its editor, Sophie Cunningham. Both journals have a real reputation in Melbourne and plan to open a year long discussion into reading and literature in an age of changing technology, particularly with eBooks.

On the panel last night was Margaret Simons, Marieke Hardy, Sherman Young, and Peter Craven – and chaired by Sophie. They tackled the issues of the future of reading, the effect the eReader and online content will have and how these new technologies will affect reading.

I thought Sherman Young’s initial comments breaking down the question made it quite clear: How will reading by done in the future? And will we still be reading long-form text?

It’s a massive question and that’s why there’s going to be a whole year of events, articles and conversations around it. Last night’s opening only began to scratch the surface, let more questions branch out, and made me curious for more.

Margaret made the bold prediction that eReaders would be everywhere in 2010, and that in five years, most of our reading will be done on them. It’s bold because the Australian market is sadly lacking in any eReaders at the moment, in stark contrast to the United States where they’re taking off.

She also envisioned that reading and writing would become less of a private affair, where your thoughts and reactions would be broadcasted in various forms, such as Twitter-like services more frequently. ‘Crowd-sourcing’ comes to mind like with Wikis and creator’s creative control over their work seems under threat if we agree with what Margaret says. I’m not quite so sure.

Marieke Hardy was asked to speak because of her experience writing the M-book, said not to be interpreted as the Marieke-book, but the mobile book, which seems to be a craze in Japan, with ‘novels’ broadcasted onto people’s mobile phones in chapters each morning.

The example lays the basis for the future of reading on electronic devices. I wondered myself whether the birth of eReading would see the revival of short fiction, on the basis that it’s easier to read shorter texts on a screen with backlit glare.

But Marieke’s predictions don’t extend to the death of the printed book, and says that readers will maintain attachment to the printed book for reading longer texts, particularly the classics. There is a difference in the way you read something on a screen compared to a paperback, unlike the shift from records, to tapes, to CDs, to MP3 players where you essentially digest the medium in the same way.

I’m inclined to agree with this romantic attachment to the printed book, even if I do most of my reading on the screen anyway. This doesn’t mean my mind won’t change as technology does though.

When Sherman Young answered his own broken-down version of the question he was pretty straight-forward as he read his talk from his mobile phone. We would be reading from screens in the future, and yes, we would still be reading long-form text like novels.

He took the angle of arguing that contrary to what everyone else is saying, reading on screens does not determine what you read, that it isn’t inevitable that you’ll only read shorter texts.

I think I agree and disagree. Whilst I can still see that people will want to read novels and longer works, the nature of the screen as opposed to the page (as they’re currently designed) makes it difficult to read for longer periods of time. It’s mainly due to the glare of a back-lit screen placing strain on your eyes. I said this in my post about the iPad. eInk may change all of this but it’s frustrating that I’m yet to get a chance to see how it works!

But I agree with Sherman when he went on to dismiss the notion that screens and the internet are going to shorten our attention spans. I think this is mostly troglodyte hysteria.

To be honest, I didn’t take in too much of what Peter Craven said, other than his admission at being from the rare group of people to still write his work in cursive long-script with a fountain pen. I felt Peter named-dropped a little too much and was less engaging and fresh than the others, but perhaps this is some unconscious prejudice against those who don’t use technology.

The questions of economics play a big role in this whole debate I feel and as a Marxist, I see that capitalism plays a role in determining how reading and technology are going to develop and it will place limitations on the industry, given that the need for something to be profitable for publishers/other companies is going to be of prime importance to those driving the industry, and then the economic basis on which the writers survive is going to depend on how sustainable it is.

This was flagged at something to be discussed in the future and something I’m really curious about. This first event really wet my appetite for this whole discussion and I feel that by the end of the year, we will all be much clearer on what the hell is happening to the publishing industry.

Other posts:

• Fancy Goods: Our dark and private spaces
• Little Girl With a Big Pen: Meanland, Reading In a Time of Change
• Meanland: Reading in a Time of Change