The New Foldable iPhone & the Book

Technology Keeps Taking From Us

Since their invention, books have suffered little to no modifications in their configuration. Some objects simply work as they are. I have written about this before here. Yet, technology keeps trying to replace them. First came tablets and Kindles, which promised to make reading lighter, cheaper, and more convenient.

Note to the reader: I myself read ebooks as well. It’s not my intention to argue that printed books are inherently superior. In fact, books were once a technological advancement themselves, and it is only natural to turn to digital devices to adapt to new materials and formats, in an attempt to make life “easier”. However, it is also true that technological devices hardly replace the analog, tactile experience of holding a book, turning its pages one by one, underlining a sentence, scribbling something in the margins, or keeping it on a bookshelf to go back to it later on (or not!). At least for me, books and screens do not cancel each other out, but rather they offer two very distinct reading experiences, each with its own possibilities and limits.

Apple’s new foldable iPhone, however, has left me with a different kind of uneasiness.

As I’m writing this, I am trying to understand exactly what bothers me about it. It is not that the device might replace books: a foldable phone is still a phone, with all the apps and functions that come with it. Nor is…