end[of]paper
Kim White and
Sarah Townsend constructed this beautiful
page from their well designed matrix of electronic book equivalents.
follow the reader
The genres of electronic book equivalents are the same ones that crossed all the historical format transitions as well. These are reference works, textbooks, and wiki cosmographies. These genres are consulted in the format of talented individuals who memorize and maintain information and they are consulted in every other out of body format of transmission ever invented. E-books are not new.
Electronic communication and digital research immediately distinguished itself in other, authentically new functions where search engines, multimedia linkage, instant connectivity and text processing expedients quickly emerged and were quickly adopted.
While e-book advocates wait for their format to take off, screen based reading has already flown into history.
In a similar story the advent of printing did not distinguish itself as a technology for producing facsimile of manuscript. The revolution of printing was the proliferation of duplicates that enabled the arrangement of books into libraries everywhere. This authentic revolution in the transmission of culture may yet be undone by the new screen based reading mode. But then, following a dark era, libraries will need to be reinvented.
For a standard, arbitrary interpretation and projection of the future of books see
Digital Text Cycles. (from
BookNotes)
stone, paper, pen and book
Tanja Bolenz is a lettercutter, calligrapher and bookbinder who lives on Denman Island, British Columbia, Canada.
the CHANGING BOOK is beginning
The recent conference at the University of Iowa worked.
It was also a wonderful conference because of the inherent excitement of the tangents and scope of the prospects for the print book. Everyone was invigorated to realize how familiar and how unfamiliar the power of the book is. Book specialists of all varieties described the quick advances of their fields while at the same time they learned of other specialties of the book that they never knew existed. The momentum of prospects for the print book drove each topic.
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