art, fact, and artifact
“Roused by research into the materiality of texts, humanities scholars and institutional curators have summoned new facts to explain communication technologies, writing an alternative history of word and image in the book format.”
Be
there and be
square, January 8-10, 2009.
makes sense
So many projections of the future of the book just toy with the contrast of the print book and the screen book. Every popular discussion questions which reading device is best at the beach, on the subway or in the tub. And then there is endless evocation of the smell and feel of old books. Meanwhile, many other discussions are biased by presumptive projections of digital advocates. Print advocates are frequently cast as misguided and regressive. Perhaps a more effective approach is needed to distinguish print and screen books by weighing their different transmission attributes and by realizing their very promising interactions.
The mediation of the print and screen book, getting from one to the other, is efficient and pervasive as libraries have demonstrated for decades. Services of bibliographic utilities, smart search applications and screen delivery have repurposed print libraries. Print attributes of fixity, navigational and haptic refinement and reliable re-access across time, all pair nicely with screen attributes of immediacy, automated search and live content.
Another crucial pair of print and screen attributes is revealed by the self-authenticating nature of the print book contrasted with the self-indexing nature of the screen book. This means that the print book carries with it layers of physical evidence, overt content and bibliographic codes that persistently reveal the source and intent of its production. Such features of self-authentication, confirmed with ease of re-readings across time and cultures, give the material book its special role in transmission. But print books resist indexing and have been compiled into libraries only with great effort or with the help of on-line cataloging and finding aids.
By contrast the screen book is self-indexing because the encoding or production process that renders books to the screen also enables their keyword search routines. However, the effervescent screen books resist authentication. Screen books, like touch screen voting, remain vulnerable and un-trusted with ease of unmonitored deletions or revisions and uncertain provenance. And expectations are very different with screen based research. The content is served quickly and the reader is induced to consume quickly as well.
Now such eerie counterpoints of print and screen works should be observed in detail to better understand their interaction for cultural transmission. Going forward disproportionate dependence on a single mode is too hazardous. Cultural transmission has always relied on composite modes and transitional hybrids such as e-book devices, print-on-demand, electronic ink, and page and scroll screen navigation all signal momentum toward more mature and elaborate interaction of print and screen.
And they are eerie counterpoints. It is as if the screen is filling a transmission void of print and as if print is founding its own more essential, less ramified, role. So simple competition between the print book and screen book is an illusion; each has a different function and there are exclusive attributes of each. A lively interaction of the two modes is in motion. Mirror attributes, rather than contrasts of advantages and disadvantages, have emerged and mutual redefinition is at work. The surge of advance and use of screen based reading confirms its complementary fulfillment in print and a surge and advance of print confirms its new dependence on digital technologies.
Least of all should the print book be implicated as obsolescent in a context of frustrations or aspirations of advocates of screen delivery. Although the print and screen book are now defining each other, they both have their own futures.
paper authentication vs. touch screen indexing
“Voters cannot trust the totals reported by electronic voting machines; they are too prone to glitches and too easy to hack. In the last few years, concerned citizens have persuaded states to pass bills requiring electronic voting machines to use paper ballots or produce voter-verifiable paper records of every vote. More than half of the states now have such laws.” New York Times, August 3.
The drama of electronic voting mirrors larger issues in cultural transmission including the future of the paper book.