crossing the divide
“It is very satisfying that reading people are engaging in discussions about the future of the book inspired by this project. However, I think the future of reading habits cannot be easily foreseen. The future is not monolithic, or a matter of dominance of one medium over the other. Instead it is a matter of co-existence. “ Manolis Kelaidis
The innovative way forward is to accept the book as it is and build on that. Take Manolis’ insight and invention just one step more and it will be apparent that any print book is discrete enough to provide its own coordinates to its own (subscription) engine. The touch prompt is not needed since it is too restricted as a query.
blooks
The blog postings of FotB are now in print. Don’t hesitate to order copies if you can figure out
how to do that.
rare books in the open stacks
“BookSurge is pleased to be partnered with Kirtas Technologies to offer organizations a state-of-the-art, nondestructive digitization service that produces superior scans while gently handling your rare books and documents.”
This is the pathway to repropagation of the open stacks. And the best part is that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo book search engines will serve as the bibliographic utilities for the new print collections.
shape of the page
Papyrus of Antiquity was sold in rolls. When preparing sheets for a codex book the roll was cut into squares and these were folded to produce a half square. The vellum books of the middle ages were based on the quadrants of animal skins which yield a more square shaped folded page. To us both formats seem strange; the elongated rectangle of the papyrus page and the squat shape of the medieval page. Perhaps this is because later printed books were folded from the size of sheets optimized by a third shape determinant; the paper mold.
The sectarian codex of papyrus was also optimized for portability while the medieval book became more sedentary. The shape of the page reflects this functionality. The iPhone, optimized for portability, is proportioned exactly to the half square of the papyrus codex. Likewise it reflects the nomatic and conceptually possessive character of its users.