Bucknell Magazine, Fall 2017: Reading in 2 Worlds

President's Message from Bucknell Magazine, Fall 2017

Popular opinion has it that engineers don’t read much beyond C++ code. As I glance at the books lining the shelves in my office, with topics ranging from World War I history to photography to Shakespeare, I must beg to differ. In fact, when I moved into the President’s House nearly eight years ago, my sole request was to add shelves to contain what is now a 5,000-volume library. I must confess that quite a few are still in boxes! Books on cooking share space with those on economics and political science — and with literary classics, many of which are beautifully bound and printed. I appreciate my books’ aesthetic quality almost as much as I do their content.

But having an appreciation for the beauty of "analogue" hard-copy books doesn’t mean I shun digital technology. For 35 years, first as an undergraduate, then as a professor and vice provost, I watched, firsthand, the growth of Silicon Valley. Some might say I became a digital geek, as I was not a digital native the way our current students are. (My first digital device was a Texas Instruments calculator, which my dad bought for me during my senior year in high school.) Although I have embraced today’s digital innovations, they are, in my eyes, no substitute for good "old-fashioned" books.

That’s not to say I spent my early years with my nose in a book. In fact, I was a late bloomer in that regard. It wasn’t until my first year in my doctoral program, when I read Freeman Dyson’s Disturbing the Universe, that I really caught the book bug. All of a sudden, my interest in reading exploded, and for the rest of my life I have sought to expand my reach, widely reading books of many sorts, from Jane Austen to John le Carré, Isaac Asimov to Edmund Wilson. I also subscribe to some 50 periodicals; I’ve been telling students for 30 years that they must spend at least 30 minutes per week with The Economist.

I tell you this because I sincerely believe that life is most enriched when we dwell in both worlds, the digital and the analogue. I know this has been true for me in my career and personal life, as it was for Steve Jobs, who in his iconic 2008 commencement speech at my alma mater talked about taking a calligraphy course at Reed College. This ancient ink-on-paper art greatly informed the aesthetic sensibility he brought to the beautiful typography designed for the Macintosh computer. Jobs illustrated how important it was to have a foot in both the analogue and digital worlds.

Jobs’ example is one I frequently invoke, especially when talking with our students, who often prefer their sleek and lightweight devices to the older and bulkier deliverers of content. I hope they will, as I did during my college days, learn to toggle between both worlds.

For decades I have urged students to read broadly beyond what is required in class to build their best possible futures. I hope that they will discover the pleasures — aesthetic, intellectual and emotional — of an artfully produced book, much as I did so many years ago.

John Bravman