dark screen
“We like to believe in progress, but the truth is that the electronic age may be just a return of the manuscript age, and the print age may come to be seen as a 500 year abberation — an island of fixity in an ocean of loss.” Michael Gorman
During the manuscript era it was necessary to copy works continuously to prevent their loss and enable their transmission over time. The same is needed with digital resources as their recording media deteriorate and as their deliverability across systems degenerates.
future assured
The Importance of Being Permanent by Simon Waldman and Jay Roseman and those who commented is a wonderful exposition of the need for endless news archiving and the native capacity of the web to provide such permanent vapor trails through past news and news reporting.
(This link was found in a posting at the
Institute for the Future of the Book.)
future deleted
Words have been deleted from the name of the third annual international conference on the (future of the) book.
The Third International Conference on the Book Oxford Brookes University, 11-13 September 2005
“The conference will address a range of critically important themes
relating
to the book – including the past, present and future of publishing,
libraries, literacy and learning in the information society.”
atm for books
“The MTI PerfectBook-080 quietly made publishing history shortly before midnight on July 9, when the first POD book ever to emerge from a fully-automated vending machine slid out the chute of a prototype in Chesterfield, MO. “