googling
“Indeed, I wonder whether the fact that more brain regions are in simultaneous use during web use than during reading doesn’t illustrate (among other things) that concentrated thought becomes more difficult to maintain when reading online than when reading a printed work. Is the relative breadth of brain activity discovered by Small and his colleagues also a map of distraction?”
Nicholas Carr
Indeed. What if print reading is more efficient than screen reading? This is a fast food, slow food dynamic as well; if the screen delivers quickly it also induces quicker consumption. What if sustained quality nurtures comprehension, better than quick results, fries and shake and what if an attentive mind is as important as a quick navigator?
inlibri
The project to preserve historical libraries of Arequipa now has a
home on-line thanks to Jessica Peterson. Check out the great page composition on Peruvian binding.
earth book
The materiality of the book and the transmission role of that materiality is so nebulous it seems. Let’s imagine that the book is blank with no content, then what kind of artifact would it be? Would it be a coffee cup or a sofa? The natural world is devoid of text. In spite of metaphor, geologic formations or seashore ecologies don’t come with instructions. How would a book work without print?
Strange, it would still be here. It would still work, opening and closing, shelving and going with us on trips it would remind us of its provenance or some acquaintance. We would wake up and see it there, some kind of graceful companion. It could grow old and then outlast us. It could be discovered again in the future and be re-interpreted for what it is. Layers of manipulated investigation, many as simple as fanning the pages, are afforded by the hand held codex. It can seem inefficient to convey conceptual works in objects, but tactile authentications produce a performance space for acts of reading and retention.