antiphonal epiphany
The fate of the art of the codex will converge with the future of the book at a
conference. The future of the codex is not quite the same as the future of the book which, together, are not quite the same as the future of libraries.
(an ancient FotB projection)
reading mode and governance mode
On the bright side, computers augment our native abilities to sort, search and discover. On the dark side, the search results, unbeknown to the reader, can be preselected, manipulated or censured. So contrasts between print and screen reading include issues of democratic governance. These issues are not much different than those posed by paper ballots vs. electronic voting.
“Under a secret ballot system, there is no known input, nor is there any expected output with which to compare electoral results. Hence, electronic electoral result cannot be verified by humans and the people need to have an absolute faith in the accuracy, honesty and security of the whole electoral apparatus (people, software and hardware). Requiring reliance on such faith may not be considered compatible with democracy.”
Wikipedia
***don’t confuse computers with books
“There’s a huge fallacy afoot that digital will take the place of books, The number of books being published every year is going up. Print is always going to be here.” Winston Tabb
The larger fallacy is that screen based reading is equivalent to print reading and that screen drawing “stores” books. The real distictions are embedded in the functionalities of the network contrasted with the functionalities of the paper books. The surge in books-on-demand is not an interest in analog production of print, but a demand for the functionality of the paper format digitaly produced.
Every conceptual work is born digital now, whats important is how they grow up. Digitally born books, including the editorial processes and the author/reader interactions, may grow up to be paper.
Walter Cybulski, the Avatar of the Future Cultural Role of Libraries, also points us to a recent Johns Hopkins magazine item illustrating the risk of
another fallacy at work as we divert attention from preservation of print.