futureofthebook.com

printing from the Internet

53 trillion digital pages will be printed in 2010 alone, one half directly from the Internet, an opportunity valued at more than $296 billion.
HP Print 2.0 is anticipating this direct consequence of the digital book and cold type. Check out the strange, visionary video.

a writing software

Why can’t whole blogs be like this? It is time to move beyond the primitive blog screen with its silly necklace of comments and browser endless line length. Lets have some truly graphical and dynamic presentation of the discussion, let’s approach a screen equivalent of the wonderful page composites of earlier printed cosmographies and multilingual texts. Let’s consider the interactive page innovations of the manuscript era.

Reference
Christianity and the Transformation of the Book.

a writing university

Its interesting how oblivious the
Writing University is concerning the mechanisms of writing transmission. The postings of readings and awards and new releases goes on in a constant stream without the slightest awareness of the media or presentation formats of these conceptual works.

Is integration of expression with its materialities too much of an educational challenge? It is apparent that at the University of Iowa is focused on writing with out a mention of the University of Iowa Center for the Book. The administrative agenda here, creating a distinguished image, is missing an opportunity.

book trail

Salem Press Library Blog
portal has kindly linked to FotB.com.

video paper, electronic papyrus

The Sony
thin display using electronic ink cells is projected for various kinds of flat and contoured displays. The simile of paper suggests the wider role of paper itself, beyond conventions of publication. Paper screen and paper print can then define each other.

weight of the Internet

The current Discover (June, 2007) magazine has quantification of how much the Internet weighs. Based on the weight of electrons required to charge all the ì1î bits the weight works out to 0.2 millions of an once or about the weight of a grain of sand. Clearly this is less than the weight of the hardware required. There are also differences in the energy used to distribute life cycle content vs. life cycle hardware. One option here is to keep our thoughts to ourselves.

Stepping backward to a larger view, can life itself be sustained without a computer, a car or a credit card? Amish farmers are able to do this here in Iowa. But until the mid 20th century their life style economy was not that much different from others around them and their behavior was in context of empathy by others. Today their behavior appears less normal.

But here is something to consider: it is the car, card and computer culture that is fragile. Card, car and computer dependence relies on energies we do not metabolically produce ourselves. The Amish person does not notice power outages.

above, below and in the Sahara

As with human evolution in Africa,
Book art in Africa adventures into origins. The advent of the codex is an African story of tied papyrus.

adventures in book conservation

The 16 session evening class 021:259:001 on historical binding will run again in the spring 2008 term. Great projects and newly expanded Conservation Lab. Also watch for soon-to-be-released, codex format, book; “Adventures in Book Conservation” to be published by
Iowa Book Works

book studies perspective

ìHaving, as a historian, studied the world of books in the distant past, I now have an opportunity to do something for the cause of books and book learning in the present,î Darnton continued. ìAnd I want to help find a way in which the new and the old media can reinforce each other, strengthening and transforming the world of learning.î Robert Darnton

Robert Darnton is
now Professor of the University and Director of the Library at Harvard.

bike library

Its not fuel efficiency, but how much you drive that matters. Escape cars and invent your own culture.
Steve and Cody show us how and kindly link to FotB.com. Librarians and FotB readers should also go to
Bike Library

split fountain

With a real retro, but 4-color feel,
Artists’ Book News covers the city.

liberation mythology of the internet

“This mythology is founded on a sweeping historical revisionism that conjures up an imaginary predigital world – a world of profound physical and economic constraints – from which the web is now liberating us. We were enslaved, and now we are saved. In a bizarrely fanciful twist, the digital world is presented as a “natural” counterpoint to the supposed artificiality of the physical world.”
Nicholas Carr

paper or plastic recycling?

“Each year, between 20 and 50 million tons of electronic waste is generated globally. Most of it winds up in the developing world.

Some of the most popular destinations for dumping computer hardware include China, India, and Nigeria. It can be 10 times cheaper for a ìrecyclerî to ship waste to China than to dispose of it properly at home. With the market for e-waste expected to top $11 billion by 2009, itís lucrative to dump on the developing world.”
(more)

(link from
Rough Type)

rush to print

The Future of the Book (dot com) website is becoming a print publication. Commentaries, Reports and Postings over an eight year span are now moving to book-on-demand format. These volumes will be available at
Iowa Book Works.

beyond screen vs. print

In the end it is not important which format is senior and which is junior, which is the manuscript and which is the published presentation or which format is forward looking. What is useful is that the future of the book may depend on the integration of attributes of networked and physical book.
(more)

mood swing

A significant shift of view is in progress over at Future of the Book dot org. New accommodation of networked authorship into a wider matrix of writing activities is in progress. While the author partitioned wiki accomplishments are moving that forum to a larger role, collaborative authorship in literary works is inert.

Meanwhile the
if:blog itself is exemplifying classical exposition exercises as FotB.org staffers and contributors are writing extensive, coherent analysis of the place of networked authorship. Many more questions than answers. There is a strange post-digital feeling to it all. Now if the line length was shortened

Nicholas Carr is considering the transition of computing to a utility status distributed just like electricity. If authorship can be a distributed utility it may still retain the current of individual creation.

story factory attractor

“What experience tops opening and reading a book you wrote yourself? Experience it!

The Story Factory at Literacy Landing (Coralville, Iowa) provides the visitor with the ultimate souvenir. Utilizing the latest in imaging and digital printing technologies the visitor will observe the lightning production of their own story as it is transformed into an elegant book. The next author you read will be you!”

The current $30 billion, on-demand publishing industry is growing at double digits every year. They would be attracted to a Stories Factory exposition featuring the possibilities. The souvenir book could be approached in various revenue positive versions. It would also spawn events and gatherings as well as standard writing vacations.

beta is forever

“Think of networked books as social spaces where author and readers interact. Tools that are popular today – email list servers, discussion forums, blogs, wikis even virtual game spaces like Second Life – could be thought of as rudimentary sketches toward a far more sophisticated architecture that could transform books into conversations”

Ben Vershbow

It is consistent that advocates for the futuristic networked book overlook two counterpoints. One is that the paper book has already fulfilled the avant guard functionality and social role that is envisioned, and two is that the futuristic networked book has not quite yet achieved the same attributes.

Who is being opaque here? If there is such a hunger for a re-engineering of the cognative book device why not consider the existing model first? For starters, why not consider for a moment the function of the book as a physical evidence of thoughful living?

trust in paper

Florida is returning to
paper ballots. The excursion into touch screen has proven that touching the screen is not sufficent for maintenance of democratic governance.

So does the contrast between screen and paper readership also play into the maintenance of knowledge generally? It is worth realizing that mutability and a living dynamic of texts is germinated by their printing to paper. This is not a contradiction; persistent variation and differing evidence based interpretation invigorates books.

text voice and distributed power point

A recent FotB
illustrated lecture on aesthetics of book conservation is better than ever.

building a second life in first life

FotB has long been projecting the fantasy reassertion of print in a context of its presumed eclipse. Now
SLArt magazine begins this backward summersault, complete with advertizing rate card. Listen to Richard explain the situation.

The new physical book is changing within a momentum of digital authoring modes, connected writing environments and self-publishing technologies. The previous book changed too.

full speed ahead

“From my own modest experience here at the AHA, I know how hard it is to go back and correct mistakes online when the imperative is always to move forward, to add content and inevitably pile more mistakes on top of the ones already buried one or two layers down. With Google adding in more than 3,000 new books each day, the growth in the number of mistakes seems that much higher.
I find it increasingly hard to believe that Google can add tens of thousands of additional books each month to the information pileómany containing basic mistakes in content and metadataóand the information results will actually grow better over time.” Robert Townsend

Google Books: What’s Not to Like?

tipping point

“Politics gets interesting when it stops raining.”
NYTimes

Mobilization of progressive government in a context of global warming is not inevitable, but is happening. Similarly, reassertion of a progressive future of print in a context of screen reading, is not inevitable, but is happening.

But what prefigures drought without paper books? Among other attributes, is there a need to convey the second life in physical objects? Some deep, embedded desire? And are there digital technology and screen based paths to reassertion of the physical book? Countering fire and ice with fire and ice?

from screen to print

The digital revolution will be remembered for the reinvention of the paper book.
Lightning Source expansion.

print-on-impulse

FotB is going full circle and producing print books from screen commentary. Like Keith Smith and
Walt Crawford, FotB will convey the digital stream to the publish-on-demand industry and await new books in the mail.

The first FotB books will compile the oldest and most vanity flavored commentaries. The relationship between print and screen reading was anguished between 2000 and 2004. The role of the hand held reading device, either electronic or paper based, was debated and contested without pause for mutual redefinitions and the commentaries convey some of the confusions which are isolated to that short period. Both before and after the period, the role of the book is much more apparent.

“Lulu.com transforms every kind of creativity into hard copy. It¥s where anyone can turn words, pictures, photographs, music and movies into beautiful books, CDs and DVDs. For entertainment, education and information by the people, for the people ñ start browsing!” Books by Mode is the local shop working with FotB.

Now I am beginning to realize what the tag line “preservation and persistence of the changing book” means.

attentive reading

“Coming as it does at a time when newspaper book reviews are endangered, many writers, publishers and critics worry that the spread of literary blogs will be seen as compensation for more traditional coverage. ìWe have a lot of opinions in our world,î said John Freeman, president of the National Book Critics Circle. ìWhat we need is more mediation and reflection, which is why newspapers and literary journals are so important.î New York Times

Emerging Writers

curved space

“The
SL Book Art Museum will encourage the creation of new artistic content, and give a strong impulse to in-world book technology. The codex shape the object has from late antiquity survives in the Second World, and still suits the avatarís need to leaf through pixel pages: but the history of the RL object is longer, and it will not be left behind. In this way, the SL Museum will keep tangible the memory of the bookís source as artifactóthat particular mix of creativity, taste, knowledge, practical skills and patient effort called by the Greeks ?? (techne), ìart/craftî. This human attitude is, in my opinion, the true link between the book you can touch and the one you can click.”
óPetronilla Paperdoll

The location of the fulcrum that
Richard Minsky is using to leverage the future of the book from two differing universes must be in curved space. But it is also grounded in a new interplay of paper and screen reading. The summer 2007 SLArt magazine will appear in paper to surprised avatars of Second Life.