futureofthebook.com

book blog with everything

I really enjoy the deli varieties at
Fade Theory

embassy vending

Rum-ba-ba typography and Industrial Strength Soda and Snack Vending Machines for All Business! The mechanical Turk still stands in the voids of reality vending
Zines and confections.

degrees of separation

The typewriter interposed between manuscript and print disconnecting typographic distinction. The keyboard type setting machine interposed between the compositor and the type case disconnecting physical characters from text. Word processing disconnected linear composition and diversified reading sequences.

All three transitions repositioning skills of dexterity in techniques of communication. The consequences of these haptical and kinetic changes are immense and invisible. Equally important are cross-format continuities of portability and physical possession of concepts. Churn of the role of copyrights and publishing models reflects the immense and invisible transitions at work.

The phantom of futurist projection here is simple progression between changes and presumptive hard linkage between screen and paper based reading, simple secessionist scenarios for book formats and vertical economic and technologic models for publishing. Among other outcomes can be post-digital repositioning of dexterity in techniques of communication and the role of the keyboard.

future of digital books

“Amazon, which made its name selling books online, is now entering the book-digitizing business.

But, unlike Google and Microsoft, Amazon will not limit people to reading the books online. Thanks to print-on-demand technology, readers will be able to buy hard copies of out-of-print books and have them shipped to their homes.”

behind the curtain

“And, more to the point: One of my key concerns with Google is that it is a black box. Something that means so much to us reveals so little of itself.”
Siva Vaidhyanathan

poise

The most graceful
page on the web.

fear of the fear of change

The first readable screen was the night sky, points of light on a black field. Observers of the night sky began to construe patterns, then omens and cosmographies and astrophysics based on readings of the night sky. Screens still work best in the dark and provide a whole domain of reading. Other reading surfaces work better in reflected light.

Screen reading advocates fear the stasis of continuities of bionic reading. They fear that there may be no particular linkage, or supercession scenario between different reading modes. Most particularly they fear that there may be persistent exclusive attributes and disattributes in any reading mode that has been around for a long time.

l.s.d.i. and l.s.d.p.

The Council on Library and Information Resources
white paper, “Preservation in the Age of Large-Scale Digitization”, concludes that while libraries can hope to preserve the vast bit streams of mass imaging projects, the “enduring access of enabling on-line discovery and retrieval of material” is complex and uncertain. Pro-active preservation effort is needed, but this report assigns no specific role to preservation departments. This fact alone suggests a tentative state of the problems.
(more)

multiple providers

A content delivery churn forcing consumers to straddle multiple providers is retarding the advance of screen reading. The divisive effect is especially disruptive when it continuously rearranges readers by age. With the book there is only a single provider; the codex format.

rum ba-ba

This
1994 conference predates the materiality of the book since it then had little immateriality.

death watch glee

Screen reading advocates enjoy tracking decline of print formats such as decline of print newspapers or book stores. They are less active at watching decline of screen formats such as those based on analog magnetic and computer media. They also tend to disregard television trends, once the most popular network based screen format. Screen reading advocates should perhaps take a note from librarians and look to growing interactions of print and screen reading.

oddly matched agendas

Denominational authorization and entreprenurial promotion were two agendas of historical printing in the Amana Colonies. Oral testimonials of Pietist spirituality needed reformatting as did product packaging for blankets, medicines and flour. Among the industrious Colonists printing was perhaps their most diverse product.

Wide communication agendas signal transition from the 19th century to our own times. Today each of us receives as much paper print daily as many prior to the advent of digital publishing received in a month. Unfortunately the discard of unwanted junk paper mail also mirrors inefficiencies of on-line reading.

codex companion of consciousness

Matt Brown’s
new book is an adventure into the prospects for book studies. With wonderful expression and integration it moves beyond the curtain of “print culture” into the kinetic and conceptual ergonomic of book possession; the codex acts on the reader as the orator of its text. This is a novel historical novel with awesome powers of persuasion.

“But here is my wager: if I can convince you that the physical property of texts – their visual appearance, tactile feel, and oral performance – were central to a society conventionally understood as iconophobic and ascetic, where communication is in the “plain style” and where expressive aesthetics are feared, then the case for book history’s significance will be all the stronger when we turn to indviduals and societies where such conditions do not prevail.”

root functions

The root functions of printing are replication and duplication. The root functions of digital communication are word processing and field sorting. These are the primary, early and persistent applications of the technologies and both departed from previous manuscript production methods of hand writing or typewriting.

So, and this is the point, the discussion going forward should acknowledge these fundamentals and not flail blindly. As products of these technologies, books replicate and duplicate manuscripts while blogs modify and search manuscripts. Projections of digital communications transforming books must use hybrid, uncertain and malapropt premise.

blog as self-watching

Collecting My Thoughts is an exemplar of evaluation using librarian skills .ever wonder who you are? Here is a method for the answers.

medium is message

Change of format changes meaning. Crucial subtopics are science and behavior based regarding the way we learn and the tactics of communication. These issues are not small in the course of politics, governance and trajectories of history. False dicotomies and polarities are decoys and distractions. We need to understand our vulnerabilities.

During most of the 19th century the news was posted weekly. Later at the end of the 19th century mechanical type composition enabled news to be posted daily.
Now we have news posted hourly. Its still news, (some would even say its the same news) but it has a different grip on our lives and thinking. These are largely effects of changing formats and reading behaviors.

changing book

The post-print of 18 essay presentations from the 2005 conference Changing Book has been published. It appears as
31/1-2, 2006, issue of Collection Management.

Here is an exemplar of the rambling adventure of the future of the print book. Learn how the leading
practioners view the ergonomics of comprehension.

topologies

“To a future textual scholar looking back on these early electronic texts, the dominant theme is likely to be variation and experimentation. Our electronic incunabula are distinguished by their eclecticism in every area: the type of markup used, the kind of software required, the method of distribution employed, the structure and architecture of the text, and the kind of editorial approach used. It is possible that, over time, a more limited range of standard varieties may emerge, as happened with the manuscript codex and the printed book. But this seems unlikely. Eclecticism is inherent in the electronic format and is likely to persist for some considerable time.” Toby Burrows, Perth, 1997.

“In a curious way, the universal library becomes one very, very, very large single text: the world’s only book.” Kevin Kelly, 2006.

decision grip

Attentive consideration of non-verbal expression and haptic communication is in the
dictionary of gesture. This is the homepage for an ergonomic of comprehesion exemplified by navigation of the codex.

“we unwittingly grasp the item in a decision grip–which maximizes contact between the item itself and the sensitive tactile pads–as if it were already a personal possession or a belonging.”

a library of books instead of songs

Comparisons of digital presentation of music are sometimes used to project trends in the digital presentation of books. The better comparisons would be between listening and reading in both engagements. The song we hear as a narration of ourselves is equivalent to the book we grasp as another narration of ourselves. Both conceptual actions move us on.

A following question is how live music listening can differ from recorded listening, and how print reading can differ from screen reading. A music video can add visual dimension and the screen image can add page turn navigation. Virtual or nefarious .as narrations of ourselves?

ready for prime time

Mobility and Function has taken on its narrative shape and the Linotype compositors at FotB have moved on to new copy.