Over time, in our class discussions, I’ve come to realize that the nature of the book isn’t so much linear as it is cyclical. The history of the book works similarly, operating cyclically, and affecting society, thereby causing remediation that we may sometimes mistake for “new”. However, in reality, many of the digital fears we have now, for example, AI today, were also shared by people in the past. “In the years leading up to the new millennium, fears of the digital were articulated as threats to the book.”(Pressman 26). Professor Pressman mentions how the book wasn’t always the thing threatened for obsolescence but in fact the catalyst of fear and change:

“In a pivotal scene in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831), set in fifteenth-century Paris during the emergence of the printing press, Victor Hugo poses the archdeacon Claude Frollo, the narrative embodiment of the Catholic Church, alongside a book and a view of Notre Dame: ‘The archdeacon gazed at the gigantic edifice for some time in silence, then extending his right hand, with a sigh, towards the printed book which lay open on the table, and his left towards Notre-Dame, and turning a sad glance from the book to the church,—‘Alas,’ he said, ‘this will kill that.’ ’1
The statement ‘this will kill that’ expresses a belief that new media (here, the book) will
destroy older, established forms of knowledge production and distribution (here, the church).”(27)

This fear of the new destroying the old is not new, especially when it comes to The Book. The church, back then, had an incredible amount of power and influence in the world. It feels as though the expansion of information and the book itself were seen as potential catalysts for the church’s downfall in terms of stripping its power that it had on people. For now, the information and potential influence weren’t limited through the mouth of the church or kings who were likely loyal to the church as well.

Today, books now come in various formats, to the point where you can buy a version of a book that’s being read to you. AI now has the capabilities of writing fiction if prompted to, and mimicking the way we write. We have now, more than ever, become a society that relies on technology for many things, and that is not limited to literature as well. But it is the forms that the book takes that can illuminate perhaps what we, as a society, are now utilizing, prioritizing, and finding comfort in. But a paradox forms in that it is this exact shift that creates reactions to preserve and continue to nurture the book into the Digital Age.