futureofthebook.com

screen on, screen off

“Although, from a technical perspective, everyone can read a book from the 16th century, only few are able to access 15-year old data stored on diskette. In
conversation with SAP INFO online, Neil Beagrie, British Library and Joint Information Systems Committee Partnership Manager at the British Library, explains the issue of whether and how the knowledge of the 21st century can be preserved as part of our cultural inheritance for future generations.”

light-on, light-through

A less well known McLuhan aphorism; the media differ between those lit by reflected light such as print and those lit by transmitted light such a cathedral window or computer screen. We are more allured to watch the media of light-through, but induced to study media with light-on.

The
Zine Machine is light on in a context of light through. Another layer here is vector vs. paint. Line art easily crosses media, from cave walls to letterpress to draw software. Continuous tone imaging is more medium specific. Zines on-line or on-paper reveal these distinctions.

One question for Zine makers and Zine readers is where their attention is and where is their expressive message; light-on or light-through or both? No question, perhaps, if you are using a SnackShop vending machine for distribution. But is the medium the message? Perhaps, McLuhan only
meant to reveal that medium is 50% of the meaning in communication. That’s dumbfounding enough.

new folklife division

Similar to recording folk song, the Library of Congress will now assume responsibility to collect in the cyber-ethno space;
Web snapshots.

new print shop

“A grant from Silos and Smokestacks National Heritage Area will help us open the Homestead blacksmith shop on a limited basis this coming year. Last summer we were able to repair and clean it, and we hosted demonstrations of blacksmithing, printing, book binding, and linotype operation during the sesquicentennial celebration.”
Amana Heritage Society

Magnificent job printing and book printing was accomplished in the small Amana Colonies on the Iowa prairies. Tomorrow we revive the legend.

new McLuhan

” .the Big Story of historical time is the co-evolution of the person and media as extensions. Life is lead forward and understood backward. Now that we can see history as culminating in an information society, then it is imperative that we revision history in terms of communication rather than in terms of conflict. Much conflict is a footnote to communication – case studies of failures of communication.”
Lambert Gardiner

His new book Media Past, Present and Future provides context and scholarly metadata for evaluation of extrasomatic tools such as books.

BookNotes will return

Craig has a new host for BookNotes and perhaps a new agenda in the post-Regressive era. Are we taking back the streets?

try this

Go to the “New Aquisitions” shelf of a large research library. There you will see one hundred or so new book publications on every subject classification. You scan the selection and instantly know if you have a book to read or not.

Now enter one or two of your most favorite search terms in a search engine. You now have tens of thousands of results. How long does it take you to process out 100 irrelevant references? How long does it take you to process out 100 irrelevant BOOKS?

This tell us that there is a difference between bionic and machine searching for a good book. Which achieves the quicker selection?
Notice that the mind quantified the given universe of the books, as well as making a choice. The engine dissolved the same books into word frequencies, a bionic unuseful universe. Bionically unuseful universes.

***“books are dead” deadheads

Computers mirror books, as well as a range of visual events. However, they should not be confused with books. Screen based reading actually dissolves books and the future of the codex needs no reference to screen based reading. Search engines provide a reading method that eliminates the coherence of individual books digesting and parsing whole libraries down to word frequencies and search terms. The preservation concern is no longer deterioration of paper, but digital dissolution of books.

Another thing is that paper books work efficiently to facilitate comprehension. This is a factor overlooked. It derives from the haptical attributes of the physical book that use a deep embedded learning path of the hands prompting the mind.

If the Google engines are going to make the books talk to each other, we only have to overcome the lonelyness of self and the inertia of the individual reader to look into the world library. The artistry of understanding and graceful creativity uses no gasoline or electricity or external energy. It uses metabolic energy.

(i.e.,deadhead)

haptic device engineering

The engineering of haptic response for cursor devices reveals the complexity of the
codex as a haptical communication device. The human sensorial characteristics impose much faster refresh rates for haptic feedback than for visual feedback. As a result this underlying prompt, richly provided in paper codex reading, is impoverished in screen reading.

E-book developers strive for increased resolution, simulated turning pages and attractive navigation buttons not realizing that the ergonnomic of sustained reading and eased comprehension is produced by a sophisticated kinetics of the hands prompting the mind.

“In the digital world, we are usually forced to interact with purely visual cues. Ever try using the Windows Calculator with the mouse? It’s incredibly frustrating and virtually impossible to click on the little number buttons with any kind of grace and dexterity. Yet the task is not that different from dialing a touch-tone phone, which you can effortlessly do with your eyes closed.”
(more)

For millions of years primate dexterity preceded the increase of brain size in the hominid genealogy. This circumstance engendered a learning pathway based on discovery by manipulation and tactile observation. This perceptive channel of primate dexterity then prompted the mind toward conceptual thought.
(more)

skewed search

“We have five of the world’s major research institutions offering up substantial portions of their collections for digitization and thousands of librarians apparently ecstatic at the prospect. And yet few seem to be concerned that Google’s search system is nontransparent-that no one but Google knows why search results come up in the order that they do. Frankly, I’m surprised there hasn’t been more of an uproar from librarians about this. It seems an affront to their nature as information scientists.” Ben Vershbow
Library Journal

This situation is as abusable as computer voting; its really search engine election. And what’s behind the curtain?

the zine machine

Jessica White and
Cody Gieselman, excellent Zine artists, have commandeered the Snack Shop 112 vending machine in the Main Library of the University of Iowa. In defiance of all norms of procedure and oversight, they will stock the machine with Zine Snacks. Happily, the vending machine is located next to the New (print) Aquisitions where the coolest students hang out.

“The vending machine inserts books and book products into contexts of community life. The situations of transactions are part of the charm of machine book vending; books in bars, books in hair salons, books in coffee shops, books in bus stations. Vending machines and their refined technologies provide the instant gratification of an exchange for money, a bit of gravity and the possession of different narrates, concepts and book craft projects.”

on-line home bookbinding

“If you prefer to bind your special papers and important documents into a book yourself, it is no longer required that you perform the labor-intensive task of stapling, taping, or gluing individual pages together in order to bind them into a book. Today, you can purchase a ‘binding machine’ that takes the work out of bookbinding for you.”
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plan B(ook)

Richard Minsky adds insight to an emerging issue; are books beyond the context of art?
(more)

book not art

So what does the book represent to the context of art? It represents a manifestation of conceptual works of all kinds. It is a device or extrasomatic tool, well refined and deeply entangled in human consciousness, that, alone, vindicates our species. It is a species vindicator. There is a reason why books are burned and a reason why they are preserved. Without them we would be lost.
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evolution of writing

Illustrations by Hans-Eduard Meier
Die Schriftentwicklung, Z¸rich: Graphis Press, 1959.

it must be hand held

“I recently met with Google’s CEO for the second time. And we both share the same idea: how to turn cell phones into a new kind of Internet search engine,” said Wang Jianzhou, chairman and chief executive of China Mobile.”

Reading devices must be hand held. This prerequisite is embedded. So the emergence will be the interaction of the codex and cell phone. The desktop screen is not in the incubator niche. We need manual possession of the reading screen and a level of portability equivalent to bodily mobility.

listening library

Free
audio books library

a case history

Mirjam M. Foot’s new work
Bookbinders at Work, an Oak Knoll publication, is admirable. But while she details the ambiguity of bibliographers in regard to features of the binding, she neglects a salient bibliographic feature of bindings.

The
advent of case construction effectively positioned cover making as an edition printing process. This momentous industrial revolution had special historical origins,
changed the structure of books and caused immense changes in the lives of bookbinders. But not a peep about it.

codex mission

The
Codex Foundation regrets the enfeebled state of the book. The Codex Foundation also regrets an enfeebled society that does not value books. But is the Codex Foundation enfeebled as well to imagine that the book must be considered a high art and mover of culture? The book, regardless of our deficiencies, is our perpetual companion of consciousness. The one out-of-body manifestation of a feeble species that does exhibit intelligence and graceful behavior. Forget the stinking art.

***“faith based craft kits for kids”

Always wear your amulet Ethiopian Codex in Your Protector Mahdar. Be Chosen at
Iowa Book Works

build a better blotter

A blotter is a fundamental product. A sudden enhancement of its functionality may take time to assimilate but the assimilations will occur everywhere. Like the electronic, rather than mechanical, bolt, the Zorbix sheets will find thousands of uses.

We use it for quick aqueous treatments. Its wicking power, derived from a modified organic corn starch, is amazing. Even more amazing its is ability to aspriate away the moisture that it has just absorbed. Dry-wet-dry again while you watch.

parse this

“When it comes to using Google in novel ways, some librarians seem to have discovered every tip, trick and inspired short-cut in the book.” (
librarians and Google)

Will the bridge building between the screen and book be used both ways? stay tuned.

yes

Apparently simple,
Keith is a master of depiction of the book. Look at the visually immediate computer drawing that animates each view of the little, plain paperback.

materiality of reading

The materiality of the codex consists of the physical features of the codex and their roles in conveying meaning. The materiality of the codex can also be considered comparatively and more urgently as knowledge transmission migrates to the screen.

(more)

(see also)
(and this immense item)
(or even more immense)

(image from
A Caballo Artes del Libro)

inventor of codex

The inventor of the codex was not a he, but a she. No Church Father has ever taken credit, or been given credit, for this decisive mechanisum of Christian ascendence.
(more) (the single relevant Google/MSN result for this search term)

bio Luddite

Is FotB antithetical left wing bio Luddite? Make the diagnosis at
Cyborg Democracy

“Risks are so enormous and unknowable, and regulatory institutions so flawed, that human enhancement should be banned.”

commodifying knowledge

Morris Bergman in his
latest book, Dark Ages America, the Final Phase of Empire, describes the disappearance of compassionate society and the ascent of corporate agendas. Commodification, profit motives, and a churn of displacements now extends to knowledge, community values and meaningful life. It is not a fun book, but at least it is a book.

How much longer will we have books or attentive readers? How much longer will we have, not just a flurishing market for books but, a bibliographical society guided by comprehensive debate and smart choices? In place of a Golden Age, Googlization may bring on a dissolution of books and, with that, an aimless society.