futureofthebook.com

death of print not

“Between 2002 and 2007, production of traditional titles rose 29% compared to a 313% increase in the on-demand segment resulting in an overall increase of 66% in the five-year period. “
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hits are for squares

Starbucks
provides exclusive release of music. Meanwhile the
cloud envelops Microsoft distribution of business software. While the current
frenzy of news and technologies of hand-held readers probably signals their escape from, rather than fulfillment of, the simulation of print, in the same transition the attributes of self-authentication of tangible print are dawning. Yes, immutability, obvious encompass of content and artifactual witness or provenance of the original are different from contrasting attributes of screen reading.

buffalo wings

The Obermann seminar on Extreme Materialist Readings of the Medieval Book has begun. You can depend on FotB to report on the authentic realizations of the destiny of the codex.

The composition of a medieval book merged its production with its transmission. The activities of manufacture and imaging were nearly synonymous with the activities of use and reading and ritual behaviours of parchment making, writing and recitation intermingled. This integration has been obliterated by industrialization of book production in which the activities of manufacture are unrelated to reading.

template

The euphemism for human divinity; “the word became flesh and dwelt among us”, (John 1:14), also perfectly defines the nature of the codex book. That the advent of the two innovations, of concept and medium, are coincident in early Christian history, tell us as much about the “situations of their origin” (of the gospels) as about their “subject”. One certainty is that composers of the gospels could read and write and had folded exemplars in hand. Could the template of the exemplar codex have acted in accord with the abstraction of a human manifestation of God?

Such a simple interplay of objects and ideas does not explain the underlying paradox of conveying concepts in physical objects. And, our own perception of the materialist qualities of the book is obscured by our immersion in a flood of manufactured goods and a wasteland of their disposal. But it is a fact that copyists and book makers of the middle ages conveyed to us concepts of Antiquity and of their own times using a refined communication device. If our own digital culture is to be conveyed forward we will also need such a legible, impartial, efficient, dependable and self-authenticating device. For reliable transmission of knowledge across time and cultures, which technology, that of the medieval book or that of computer media, is more advanced?

wooden board e-book

“One thing is certain: the appetite for print is growing. In 1996, there were between 60,000 and 100,000 new titles in the UK each year. By 2007, it was pushing 200,000. “

The invisibility of the obvious is there, but the reason for the obvious is obvious; digital connectivity has engendered a passion for print. The invisibility is the exclusive attributes of print posed as disattributes since they exactly contrast with the exclusive attributes of the screen. It is strange that no one considers turning the immense enthusiasm for screen delivery upside down to mine the attributes of print and the momentum that its counter passions engender.

Legibility, non-distractive navigation that enhances comprehension, default persistence and self-authentication consisting of immutability, clear encompass of content and artifact witness. The counterpoint of print. (And no, we are not going away.)

tangibility check

“Paperís tangibility allows the hands and fingers to
take over much of the navigational burden, freeing up the brain to think.”

Bill Powers
essay still has encompass, except for the distractive concern with newspapers. It is easiest to discuss paper affordances and then discuss affordances of specific genres of print. He also mentions that screen reading advocates conveniently repose paper affordances as disadvantages in the process of identifying screen affordances. This tells us that the two transmissions are different and complimentary.

beyond page scrolling

“Multi-touch interfaces are input devices that recognize two or more simultaneous touches, allowing one or more users to interact with computer applications through various gestures created by fingers on a surface. Some devices also recognize differences in pressure and temperature. Multi-touch technology introduces users to swipes, pinches, rotations, and other actions that allow for richer, more immediate interaction with digital content. Multi-touch devices and supporting applications offer diverse ways of visualizing information to improve understanding, and they facilitate new ways to foster collaborative creation, permitting several users to work simultaneously on a single screen.”
(link)

a different library

“407,000 square feet of space

Armed 24/7/365 military trained
Switch employed security staff”

Visit Nicholas Carr for a
virtual tour

flight of the condor II

Our project for the “Conservation of Historical Libraries of Arequipa, Peru” is underway. Participating are the Universities of Alabama, Texas and Iowa with materials donations from
Archival Products. We will be on-site in July. Power Point if you want one at the UI Libraries, Preservation
News.

screen pop-up, pop-up book

The
edge here is what we need. Be there and be square.

(ok, ok Just who is the “square” in the manifesto?)

(A square is a post-digital nerd positioned in the tangible world first with a wily sense of the things there, especially the books. The square knows that the hands prompt the mind and that intelligent skills begin with tactile investigation, up to and including the skills of community and personal relations. The square knows that conveying conceptual works in physical objects is an alluring paradox at the center of reading.)

turning slowly

“The company recently announced it would require all print-on-demand publishers to use its BookSurge print-on-demand service for their books sold on Amazon. Over the next few years, Amazon likely will use its power to build direct relationships with authors and gradually phase out publishers and agents.” forbes.com

Want to bet that the Kindle will become a personalized avatar for book sampling with one-click purchase of POD?

ten popular fallacies of screen reading advocates

1. There is an analog/digital divide in the technologies of information transmission. (If there is any divide it is between paper and screen based reading.)
2. There is something distinctive about being “born digital”. (All information is born digital. How it grows up provides the distinction.)
3. We are experiencing a one-way transition from paper to screen. (Its actually a two-way, not a one-way transition.)
4. Screen based books can be equivalent to print books. (This assumption overlooks legibility, haptic efficiencies, default persistence and self-authentication attributes of print transmission that are not provided in screen reading.)
5. The only history is the future. (Every revolutionary functionality of the book awaits rediscovery out of the past.)
6. The print book is at best an accessory of screen reading. (Screen reading and digital connectivity is an accessory, or bibliographic utility, of the print book.)
7. We can dismiss the functionality of the physical book because the attributes of screen reading are overwhelming. (Dismiss the attributes of the physical book and you also dismiss the functionality of sustained reading. The constraints of the physical book are instructional efficiencies that the nurture of reading skills of all kinds.)
8. Screen based delivery of text is self-indexing and searchable. (Print, unlike screen text, is self-authenticating. Print text is immutable, content encompassed and a reliable witness, all opposite of screen characteristics. Touch screen voting, census automation and many other automated tabulations from traffic control to genetic modification confirm the importance of authentication.)
9. Change is speeding up, leaving the print book behind. (The digital technologies will also engender a Renaissance of print. Paradigm change occurred in the 19th century with the advents of instant telecommunication, electrical power, digital encoding, keyboard interface and photo imaging. Since then change has been slowing down)
10. Print reading will die off with aging readers. (Youthful readers are perennially attracted to audio and visual reading while mature readers perennially assimilate sustained print reading.)

paper Wiki: you heard it here first

“Wikipedia, the Print Edition: A major German publisher, Bertelsmann, has announced plans to print a book called “The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia,” which goes on sale this September for 19.95 euros (around $32 U.S.). The book will feature some of the year’s most popular articles. Says Dr. Varnhorn, the editor in charge of Bertelsmann’s reference works, in a recent NY Times article, “We think of it as an online encyclopedic yearbook.” A statement that foreshadows the possibility of this book becoming the first of many annually printed editions.”

Being born digital is not important; everything is now born digital. How a conceptual work grows up is what counts.

All 163
comments assume that paper and screen presentations are equivalent or, as they say, fungible. Is the FotB perspective, that they are different and complimentary, too weird? Be there and Be Square.

ten days of silence

if:book has gone silent for ten days. For three years it has had tons of commentary on the future of the book. Meanwhile Teleread is in a frenzy to figure out why mimicry of physical books will just not convey to hand-held reading devices. And only its own title provides the centrifugal at
print is dead.

self-authentication

But another shift is about to occur. This will be a shift in which authentication will again be influential. Touch screen voting, census automation and many other automated tabulations from traffic control to genetic modification will require some self-authentication.
Museums, established to study physical artifacts, have already
encountered this constraint on the limits of digital simulation and
libraries will follow.
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e-book obsolescence

In another step of functional definition for the hand-held reading device, Google has
added Wiki reference to Google Maps. Placed-based learning using cellular connectivity and a phone sized communication device appears to have malapropted Kindle as a print book simulator.

And what I wonder if e-book advocates, intent to dismiss the functionality of the physical book, realize that they also dismiss the functionality of sustained reading. What if the constraints they attribute to the physical book are really instructional efficiencies for the nurture of reading skills? Then screen based reading will become an oxymoron.

***typesetting clemens’ copy

It is interesting that Sam Clemens, who himself set “acres” of type at the case, should turn around and invent one of the most troublesome challenges for future compositors. Sam had a very quick ear for variants, affectations and habits of conversation and he is now is noted for his renditions of vernacular speech. In these renditions any word could be spelled differently compelling the compositor to an unaccustomed, attentive selection of each letter.

To this day compositors must master the clever attentive state of mind that is needed to set Clemens renditions of vernacular speech. Subsequently Mark Twain became known as the literary inventor of the discipline of vernacular speech notation. Read the
Explanatory that he provides at the very beginning of Huckleberry Finn.

“EXPLANATORY

THE AUTHOR.”

tech support

Here at
Iowa Book Works we run one of the few 24/7 Ethiopic binding tech support desks. So we really have enjoyed the anniversary of the first year of the popular Utube codex format support
skit.

Surfers are still discovering this for the first time and so they marvel at its implications all over again. The implications are many including the concluding one that the Help should not be in the same format as the reading device.

wooden board e-book

The evolution of the wooden board codex binding era culminated with the gymnastic, elegant anatomy of mid 16th century. This evolution had begun more than eight centuries earlier and had absorbed transitions from papyrus, to parchment, to paper. The wooden board binding technology had also absorbed the transition from manuscript to print.

My point being that no one appears to recognize that the purpose of the contemporary hand-held devices or e-books is not to read them. Everyone is trying to read the things and trying to access books on them.

The purpose of the devices is to learn their navigation, or in the idiom of the wooden board anatomy, to learn their book action. Yesterday I had the most interesting Kindle conversation with a librarian from Senegal although we did not share a common text language.

machine AND eye readable

It is an immense attribute that physical books are so receptive to any sort of scanning, both imaging and reading. The current fad for imaging is only another enthusiasm of their use. Some presumptions do emerge, but the centuries old book will be witness centuries into the future. Imagine the presumption of the scanners who see their mission as “digitizing to preserve indefinitely”.
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Digital preservation of analog content has a number of presumptions. These include (1) that digital preservation is less costly, (2) that it requires less skill, (3) that analog collections will not outlast their digital simulations, and (4) that analog collections will not need rescanning.

legibility and the immediacy of meaning

“The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of informationís journey is the last few inches ó the space between a personís eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?

The globalization paradigm leads people to see economic development as a form of foreign policy, as a grand competition between nations and civilizations. These abstractions, called ìthe Chineseî or ìthe Indians,î are doing this or that. But the cognitive age paradigm emphasizes psychology, culture and pedagogy ó the specific processes that foster learning. It emphasizes that different societies are being stressed in similar ways by increased demands on human capital. If you understand that you are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, youíre focusing on the real source of prosperity and understand that your anxiety is not being caused by a foreigner.” David Brooks, “The Cognitive Age”, NYT, May 2.

next wave

The University of Iowa Libraries initiative to confirm the continuing role of tangible collections in the context of digital library services .is
here. This collection development agenda has moved beyond the five year stealth collection of leaf masters into an official repository. And beyond that, in the long term, this mastering and back-up collection, curated by the Preservation department, will validate the transmission function of tangible collections.

vineyard of the text

“If we realize that the rise of the author and the transparency of print was almost accidental, at best contingent, and never, even in its own time, the only way to understand production of discourse, we can more usefully and productively create alternatives in our own time.” Lisa Maruca

The Work of Print: Authorship and the English Text Trades, 1600-1760, by Lisa Maruca, is a fabulous reading adventure. This evaluation of the historical “naturalization” of print also expertly defines the ambiguities of conveying conceptual works with physical objects.

Transitions and summersaults from the 17th to 18th and into the 21st centuries suggest that the producers of print rarely accepted equitable recognition of their different contributions. Producers of intellectual “property” and producers of delivered products of print both contend for privileged treatment. In our own contemporary context the competition continues. In spite of bias for supremacy of authors as literary producers, those creator’s rights are now contradicted by “cloud” authorships, and the recognition of creativity of blog and web workers. And a dawning sense of the mortality and mutability of electronic works repositions them from eternal to physiological future life.

But what about tangibility? Here, as Maruca points out, a fawning regard for the physical possession of the computer is apparent, regardless of implications of its connectivity or content. Maruca argues that we need a grip on the tangible components of mortal work and physical product because, as print history confirms, any technology of communication quickly disappears and is sublimed as a cultural agenda.