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Originally Posted by Nerwen
Just so you know, I actually thought about beginning, "Contrary to what Marshall McLuhan may claim..."
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Avoiding or ignoring evidence to the contrary (while a common habit in court cases) is not a way to influence discussion and win debates.
As the points which both
Hilde and
Ibrin raise make clear, the medium does influence content. It could well be that certain stories/information/text will be relegated to e-texts while a different line of story and graphic and information will be treated to paper.
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Originally Posted by davem
But... I think its important to recognise that computers/websites are not merely a 'different' form of the book - they are something entirely different & the approach to producing & telling the story is entirely different. A generation (maybe two or three away) brought up entirely on e-texts/websites will not 'get' a book like LotR in the way we do, because 'books' will not carry the same meaning or relevance to them.
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And when the oral stories of the scops and bards came to be written down, they changed also, as many of the devices for enhancing memory no longer were needed. LotR is as different from an oral mythology or legend as future ebooks may be from our current best selling novels. Tolkien learnt a great deal from ancient stories about the art of story telling and pleasing an audience, but I doubt LotR in its entirety would be a successful oral story, no matter how many passages are perfectly suited to recitation. The medium does change the story.