Technology and culture: a test case

Which is stronger: technology’s power to shape local culture, or local culture’s power to influence the way technology is adopted and used? If it’s the former, as I suspect it is, then technology becomes a homogenizing force, tending in time to erase cultural differences. If it’s the latter, then technology plays a subservient role; the uniformity of the tool does not impose uniformity on the tool’s use. Culture prevails.

We’re going to get some insight into this question over the next decade or so as e-readers – in the form of both devices and apps – spread and become even cheaper. As Caroline Winter of Bloomberg Businessweek reports, in two of the most prosperous Western countries – the U.S. and Germany – the adoption of electronic books has so far taken very different routes. E-books are booming in the U.S. Less than five years after the introduction of Amazon’s Kindle, e-book sales already account for about a quarter of all U.S. book sales, and that percentage continues to rise sharply. In Germany, where e-readers are also readily available, e-books still represent just 1 percent of overall book sales.

The difference is largely a cultural one. Germany, the birthplace of Gutenberg and his printing press and the home of the Frankfurt Book Fair, is very much a country of the book. Bookstores are everywhere, and readers are attentive not only to the quality of a book’s writing but to the quality of its paper and its binding. As Spiegel’s Aaron Wiener recently observed, “Books are simply more deeply ingrained in the German way of life [than in the American].” German readers continue to have a strong sense that reading from a printed page is superior to reading from a screen.

There are also economic differences. In Germany, publishers set book prices, and the prices don’t vary from store to store. E-book prices follow these same rules, which means that they have not undercut print prices to the same degree that they have in the U.S. But this policy, too, is rooted in culture: it is aimed at preserving the diversity of the book trade. (It must pain Eric Holder enormously to travel to Germany and see so many flourishing bookshops.) E-books are also taxed at a higher rate than print books, which enjoy a tax exemption in Germany – another manifestation of the book’s special place in the culture.

So what happens from here? In the long run, will the book markets of Germany and the U.S. continue to diverge, with the e-book becoming the dominant form of the book in America but the printed book retaining its dominance in Germany? It will be interesting, and illuminating, to watch. One small hint: Although e-books represent just 1 percent of the German book market, sales of e-books nearly doubled there last year. As Dominique Pleimling, of the Institute of Book Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, says, “everything may change very quickly.”

14 thoughts on “Technology and culture: a test case

  1. Seth Finkelstein

    Phrasing it this way – “Which is stronger: technology’s power to shape local culture, or local culture’s power to influence the way technology is adopted and used?” – tends to set up the issue as if there is the same answer for all instances of “technology” and “culture”, though I’m sure you didn’t mean it that way.

    Public transportation in the United States vs. Europe seems like a good case study. The US is far more car-oriented. Part of that is distances. But part of it is also tax policy (gas taxes are very high in Europe) and public funding.

  2. Salman Khawaja

    Nick,

    “Which is stronger: technology’s power to shape local culture, or local culture’s power to influence the way technology is adopted and used? If it’s the former, as I suspect it is, then technology becomes a homogenizing force, tending in time to erase cultural differences. If it’s the latter, then technology plays a subservient role; the uniformity of the tool does not impose uniformity on the tool’s use. Culture prevails.”

    This is not related to your post exactly, but it is to a partial extent.

    As we all know, computer programmers in the United States are in short supply. Thus, Eric Schmidt has repeatedly stated that one solution to chronic unemployment is to target education towards skills–i.e. science, technology, engineering and maths, or STEM–that are in greater demand.

    Along similar lines, a distinguished academic, Raghuram G. Rajan, mentioned at this year’s World Economic Forum that “there is education and there is education: there is some education which doesn’t get you anything in the workforce, doesn’t get you any pay, and there is some education, science, technology, engineering and maths, which is very crucial in the United States, very important, and we need more of that.”

    I absolutely agree that STEM education is very important. And at this point in time the demands of the economy may well be weighted towards these subjects.

    Your post poses the dilemma of whether technology shapes culture or vice versa. Well, if Schmidt and Rajan would have it their way, it may very well turn out that increasing numbers of students would succumb to the requirements of 21st century technology and study computer science and related subjects.

    I do not denigrate students for that. These are important and interesting subject. Moreover, they clearly offer good job prospects.

    But these subjects do not by any means represent the full spectrum of human creative potentiality. Ideally, education should foster that potentiality, for all its variety.

    The prevailing world view has it that labor ought to be malleable, and that it ought to be shaped in light of the needs of technology.

    Now, we clearly needs mechanisms to ensure that people’s skills are relevant to the demands of the society.

    By that same token, however, I would have it that satisfying and willful labor is an end in itself. In other words, a healthy society should be geared towards creating the broadest possible scope for human expression. Human expression should not simply be manipulated to fit in with the needs of the society.

    Music, literature, history and other such supposedly lesser subjects are vital.

    The devaluing of these subjects, because of technology, results in the impoverishing of the general culture.

  3. Salman Khawaja

    I wrote that in a rush and only just realized that it is shot through with sloppy spelling and grammar. The desinence should read “impoverishment” rather than “impoverishing”.

  4. Nick Carr

    Seth, Yes – good point. The automobile is a great example of the complexity of the interplay. In some deep ways, cars and related systems have had a homogenizing effect on culture. At the same time, we still see important local differences in how people think about and use cars (and other transport options). Here, too, the economic differences – particularly in tax policy – are highly influenced by culture and cultural heritage.

    Salman, Your points are absolutely relevant to the question I posed. And you put them very well. Thanks.

  5. Nick Carr

    I’m not so sure. The economic factors themselves seem culturally arbitrated, to a substantial degree. But, yeah, it’s complicated, which is what makes it interesting.

  6. Albert Kauffman

    In the short term, the p-book / e-book conversation continues. In the longer term, say another 30 years, pulp is dead, Germany or wherever. By that time, we will have beautiful e-reader formats that satisfy all cultural tastes, from “book-like” pages to elegant newspads to (likely) head’s up projectors that use no physical carrier at all. We may even see direct word-to-brain interfaces by 2050-ish. Technology is shaped by a complex formula of greed, need, and cultural intertia. Kudos to you for helping us decode that formula.

  7. Andrei Lopatenko

    “Bookstores are everywhere, and readers are attentive not only to the quality of a book’s writing but to the quality of its paper and its binding.”

    And do not forget about their (Germans’) newspaper kiosks. They are everywhere, they are beautiful and there are plenty of magazines and newspapers in them. They are popular and full of people. Magazines are colorful with beautiful photography and long articles. It’s hard to replicate it in digital forms – kindles, ipads etc are unable to reproduce quality of print/photo, web browser reading is not good for long articles. You are right, Germans and in Europeans in general (I lived in Austria, Switzerland, Italy , UK and often travel to Germany) value printed word very differently than Americans

  8. Salman Khawaja

    Economics is absolutely not too important to be able to speak of cultural arbitration. We must not allow our technocrats to be our bosses.

  9. Bobcorrick

    I agree with Salman: as I see it we need to demand more of technology, and we need to develop the courage and wisdom to say what we need: and that is more than another app or or computer language

  10. Bobcorrick

    So I say we need the humanities as much or more: we needed Russ Ackoff as well as Steve Jobs.

  11. Anonymous

    Nick, so many different themes come to mind. One is the world is not flat. Markets evolve differently around the world.

    Germany is one of the more protectionist developed countries – though they will deny it, ask Boeing, Walmart, Oracle, Ford and others who have to compete with strong local or EU players there.

    As an author like you, not sure how as an industry how we justify ebook pricing without printing and distribution costs as near or sometimes more than hardback prices. It’s even more pronounced overseas for books published, printed and bound in US.

  12. Filip Verhaeghe

    Beyond cultural differences, I believe that convenience is key to adoption in my personal use. Shiny e-readers are available here in Belgium too, and I’ve got one.

    I find that I buy my US books on my e-reader: it’s convenient to buy, and available to read whereever I am.

    But I buy my local books on paper, because they are rarely available in my local language (Dutch) in e-reader format. And if they are, they are not in iTunes and I don’t typically bother to look further.

    I buy US books based on what I read online. I buy my local books when walking around in a local book store.

    I miss the electronic copy of my local books. and I miss the paperbacks of the US books in my book case (I often have the intention to buy the paper version too, but rarely act on that intention).

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