And it's an argument, but it's not necessarily true.
Consider the costs of production and distribution.
Production. Frank McCourt's memoirs were the end result of a life of telling stories socially and on stage. People who heard him tell the stories would say "you should write a book". Today his listeners wold have videoed his performances with a camera phone, posted them on YouTube, and he would be a viral star before he knew it.
Distribution. Suppose I have a head mounted camera that simply records everything I see — it's part of version 5 of the android glasses google is working on. Then along comes a third party and releases an app that simply recognizes anything I look at that's a printed page and captures it. If I read a book, I have an digital image of its pages and an OCRed text for indexing.
The cooking smells analogy is actually more accurate than the writer realizes, because all this technology makes production easier too.
Consider the costs of production and distribution.
Production. Frank McCourt's memoirs were the end result of a life of telling stories socially and on stage. People who heard him tell the stories would say "you should write a book". Today his listeners wold have videoed his performances with a camera phone, posted them on YouTube, and he would be a viral star before he knew it.
Distribution. Suppose I have a head mounted camera that simply records everything I see — it's part of version 5 of the android glasses google is working on. Then along comes a third party and releases an app that simply recognizes anything I look at that's a printed page and captures it. If I read a book, I have an digital image of its pages and an OCRed text for indexing.
The cooking smells analogy is actually more accurate than the writer realizes, because all this technology makes production easier too.