How Books Will Become Machines / quote 13 of 21
Lamartine on the future of books (1831)
The future of books in the 1830s. ‘Before this century shall end, journalism will be the whole press - the whole human thought. Thought will spread across the world with the rapidity of light, instantly conceived, instantly written, instantly understood. It will blanket the earth from one pole to the other -sudden, instanta- neous, burning with the fervor of the soul from which it burst forth. This will be the reign of the human word in all its plenitude. Thought will not have time to ripen, to accumulate into the form of a book - the book will arrive too late. The only book possible form today is a newspaper.’ Alphonse de Lamartine in 1831, cited and translated in (Carr 2010:109).