fixed displacement
“Despite exaggerated claims about the death of the book, digital technologies have indeed raised questions about the status of the book as a cultural artifact and symbolic object. Whither the printed page in the age of the networked screen? While traditional bound books remain dominant in the publishing market, how books are written, edited, published, sold, accessed, read, and preserved are becoming increasingly untethered from a spatially and temporally fixed materiality.”
conference on the future of the book
vlog as blook
Forums of network presentation can seek a legacy association such as the
vlog or blook with the book. Or they can seek their own identiy in a context of transient or ephemeral expression.
“The term “blook” has been actively used since the 1990s, by librarian/collector,
Mindell Dubansky, to describe unique or manufactured objects and ephemera that are made in imitation of a bound book or several bound books standing together. A blook is replica of a book and has no text. The term “blook” is a shortening of “looks like a book.”These items can be found as early as the 16th century and were made in many countries. They can take the form of memorial objects, advertising and packaging, toys and games, household appliances and others. For example the “bible regal” was a form of late-Medival portable organ that looked like a book.”
Wiki on blook
This is the definition of imitation books. Another meaning is the association of blogs as books. But what happens when screen forums cross through the curtain into print? oops, they become books.
“Print-on-demand publisher Lulu.com inaugurated the Lulu Blooker Prize for blooks, using the definition of a book deriving from blog content, which was first awarded in 2006. There are various ways for creating such books, including Blurb’s BookSmart. Just as Web-based services like TypePad, Blogger, and LiveJournal lowered the barrier-to-access to online publishing, such tools lower the barrier to publishing books.
The printed blook phenomenon is not limited to self-publishing. As reported in this article in The Book Standard and elsewhere, several popular bloggers have signed book deals with major publishers to write books based on their blogs. It’s not clear, however, whether a blog’s popularity directly translates into high book sales.”
Wiki on blook
newpage
Those who envision a paperless, or more exactly printless, economy should pause as they discard their daily pile of junk mail. The various paperstocks associated with four color catalogs and other mailings are fundamental commodities of national economies, As reported in
New York Times, the first tarriff on foreign goods will be imposed on Chinese paper.