Apple's tablet and the future of literature

[Commentary] It is important to bear in mind that technology is not the sworn enemy of literature as Apple prepares to unveil its much-anticipated new tablet computer. Still, the collision of technology and literature in this case may well prove explosive.

A well-designed Apple tablet, embedded in the right business model, has the potential to blow up the book business as we know it, ultimately upending the whole rickety edifice of publishers, booksellers and agents, much as the digital revolution (and Apple) have done to the music business. The result will be a seismic change in the literary culture. Ubiquitous tablets will make books cheaper and more readily available. Tablets will also change the nature of books. And a tablet will offer not just text but also sound, images and video -- which will all be commonplace in books someday, in a balance we can't yet foresee. This may undermine the primacy of text.

"The history of literature," Alvin Kernan reminds us, "has always been closely involved with such worldly things as royal courts, patronage, copyright laws, middle-class leisure, nationalism, democratic educational systems, steam-driven rotary presses, free markets and Linotype machines." Sparks always fly when technology and literature get together. We can expect that this time, as usual, they will burn down the old and light up the new.