futureofthebook.com

seeing the wind

Jose Millan at
futuro del libro was kind to mention a posting here. It was a Harry Duncan 1982 quote from his book of essays, Doors of Perception. I have been remembering various early participants in the book making community here, none stranger than
Leif Brush and his terraInstruments. Listen to a sample.

(the Hubble image is from the ever magnificent
wood-s-lot, the home station for poetic readings and picture meditation.)

e-scriptures

“The NIV Holy Bible has been the best selling Bible translation for years. Now it will become a key resource for eBook available in the popular Microsoft Reader format. Not only can the NIV Holy Bible be read just like other eBook, it can also be used as a reference source to look up a Bible verse referred to in any other eBook. This version of the NIV in Microsoft Reader format includes additional functionality which allows a user to be reading another title, hover over a Book-Chapter-Verse reference and see the actual verse pop-up as a Dictionary entry.”

Devotional works, both scriptural and scholarly, have defined the book and its presence in print. As readers utilize screen presentation these central mongraphic genres can migrate as well as airline schedules, dictionaries and romances. The format destiny of the Bible may be of particular interest.

possible futures

“The breakthrough for me was to realize that these films didnít just describe a lost past, but might also be tracing the contours of possible futures. In other words, we could see them not simply as antiquated, but as predictive.” Rick Prelinger,
“On the Virtues of Preexisting Material: A Manifesto”,
Absent Magazine

It is curious now that the Prelinger, full text, Manifesto was the last post prior to the FotB.org going off-line almost a month ago. It is a magnificent statement by an archivist futurist situating us among our documentation. The present moment can be a mirror view.

It may be our own era’s whim to see screen reading as a future unrelated to the past. But we should be prepared if this approach eventually looks silly. What if screen and print are really a single transmission ecology that is the momentum toward a different, post-digital, book? Counterpoints of print and screen works should be observed in detail to better understand their interaction and any emergence of a new synthesis.

not resolution

“Where did the pixels go? Not so long ago, you couldn’t look at type on a computer without seeing the ghost of the screen’s pixel grid behind it. But as screen resolutions have improved (thank you, Moore’s Law), pixels have become at once far more plentiful and far less visible. Indeed, the pixel has all but disappeared.” Nicholas Carr

This progression accords well with the FobT premise that screen based reading behaviors are not impaired by resolution, but by immediacies of meaning. Clumsy navigations, loading delays, screen drawing errors and ugly browser defaults are screen delivery factors that impair immediacy of meaning.

rapture

A side bar on the interaction of print and screen reading is the ever increasing processing capacity of computers. Not much doubt of the trends and of the eclipse of the processing power of the brain. Humans could be easy to outsmart but the early stage of the domination of artificial intelligence will need to occur on planet which means the machines will need to outsmart insects, fungi and bacteria. Will smart machines be able to diagnose and treat their own sicknesses? The simple life forms, so well adapted to the planet, will happily colonize the synthetic neural circuitry. And it is unlikely that oxidation and hydrolysis will take a holiday either.

This challenge has already been played out as we attempt to protect libraries from assault by lower life forms. And print and screen data have just marginally been protected from vicissitudes of planetary meteorology. AI can outsmart IQ, but that will be the easy part.

graceful companion

“Books are communicative instruments so vital to civilization that their production must not be consigned wholly to automatic means, whether industrial, technological, or economic; in the process of transmitting culture, they embody it, and therefore need to undergo the vicissitudes of the human condition so that they will reflect our common experience truly.”
Harry Duncan

bath and body

“In true Thymes fashion, the elegant and eye-catching packaging of the Indigenous Collection is as beautiful and unique as the product it houses. Elegant glass holders and containers are adorned with modern, nature-inspired patterns. The packaging of the products has an equally graceful appeal, making Indigenous candles, diffusers and home mists the perfect decorative, functional and sentimental gift for the avid traveller. No need to pack your bags for this aromatic adventure; enjoy as your senses are enlightened and memories are further rekindled!”

The descriptor of “indigenous collections” can be applied to any source materials from which digital surrogates are produced. This extends the leaf master concept of a book retained primarily for making copies. Indigenous identifies any formats of physical library materials known by their screen presentation and sequestered to authenticate those delivery surrogates.

you are here

“Iowa City joins Edinburgh, Scotland, and Melbourne, Australia, as UNESCO Cities of Literature. How could a small city in the center of the American heartland have such a wide-ranging impact on creative writing? The answer is that Iowa City, for its size, may be the most literary city on earth.”

In the light of literary achievement the role of the book maker can be unnoticed. And special achievement may mean even further disregard for means of material transmission and metropolis workers in their reverse poetry of making meaning. Or, maybe not.

“Clean space bands twice daily” (The wedging spacers were rubbed in graphite to keep assembled mats casting quickly during constant composition on the Linotype.)

never mind

Here at FotB we are frequently asked if there is a book format perspective that would provide explanation of the global finance collapse. Well there may be. The interaction of self-authenticating print with self-indexing screen could be relevant to a contrast between cash and credit.

The key word is interaction. The transmission ecology requires both print and screen or both cash and credit. Too much credit produces an imbalance where self-authentication or trust is diminished. The self-indexing credit, with computer assisted tracking and tabulation, is easily overextended globally, but the readers cannot really understand where the underlying authentication is.

We can also project finance collapse back on to collapse of cultural transmission. But we would never imbalance cultural transmission by over reliance on screen and digital research at the expense of print. Or would we?

a lifetime of reading

As Kindle passes its first year anniversary its Amazon library has grown from 75K to 200K titles. The suggestion is that Kindle, as a new age provider, can stream a lifetime of reading to the small screen. The pause here is what that means. Can we honestly sustain a full lifetime of reading without a single physical evidence of its passage? From time to time we should glance at a dark Kindle screen and imagine its effervescent as impersonal compared with the graceful, arrayed companionship of physical books.

comments on LC report

The
report separates training from practice and suggests that one follows another. More likely training and practice permeate each other across working careers. It is even possible, via kinetic and intellectual involvement with material culture collections, that training and practice cannot be separated at all, but are aspects of the same activity.
(more)

writing and books go

A cross discipline program for an MFA at Mills will merge
writing and book making into a single learning path.

legibility

“Thank you for your patience. The sites will be back up shortly.”

Legibility is not resolution .it is immediacy of meaning. When a site goes down it is as if it has gone “out of print”.

Future of the Book.org has gone off-line quiet for the last two weeks while
Futuro del Libro is posting every day. The hispanic site is ranging over many issues and perspectives with a wonderful grace and direct appeal. A graphic roots each narrative.

obama, oprah

“That tantalizing reference set off a scramble for the claim to First Reader rights all day Monday before a spokesman for Mr. Obama disclosed what the president-elect had actually read. The publishers and authors of at least three such books that could fit Mr. Obamaís description each spent much of Monday wondering whether they had just gotten a plug from the soon-to-be leader of the free world.” Motoko Rich,
NYT

The reading list of the President Elect has figured into both his recent interviews. It includes many scholarly works in print format. It will be interesting to know if he will continue with print or include use of other hand-held devices. This has been an issue with Oprah’s reading.

book art object

“What makes the tangible form of a book rewarding is that it stands for an intangible reality alive in the heart and mind.”
Robert Bringhurst

As books move us, we move books. Book structure and action responds to manipulation providing quick navigation, easy scanning, and a kinetic invitation to content.

open content

“At its heart, the settlement agreement grants Google an effective monopoly on an entirely new commercial model for accessing books. It re-conceives reading as a billable event. This reading event is therefore controllable and trackable. It also forces libraries into financing a vending service that requires they perpetually buy back what they have already paid for over many years of careful collection.”
Open Content

er, now I get it; a re-privatization of librairies, but without any preservation obligations. Such is the effervescence of the screen.

page near you

“One area covered by the important new Google Book Search settlement is that of out-of-print books, which are now on a path to a page or screen near you. The agreement gives Google broad opportunities to sell display or print-on-demand access to out-of-print titles, potentially providing easy access to nearly the whole of human thought and knowledge when the scanning project is complete.”
ars technica

It will be fun to see the market fulfillment as Google Print expands. Will the long sought titles be desired in their print embodiment and to what extent? And what will be the manufacturing qualities of the POD fulfillment? Will we republish print libraries?

“Other Potential Commercial Uses: In the future, Google
and the Registry may agree to develop other Access Uses,
including consumer subscriptions (similar in concept to theinstitutional subscriptions); print on demand Books; custom
publishing (per-page pricing of content for course packets
or other forms of custom publishing for the educational and
professional markets); PDF downloads (consumers would
be able to download a PDF version of a Book); and summaries, abstracts or compilations of Books.” Google Book search settlement

The parsing of the bibliographic entity of the book may be the sleeping issue. Much like the conversion of status from libraries to storage, the collections and books are demoted from knowledge base to cellulosic commodity.

re-reading president

During his first press conference, Obama was asked what he is reading. He mentioned that he was re-reading writing of Lincoln. Re-reading, even beyond the first reading, is one of the vital functions provided by the print book. Print assures static transmission across time and cultures to sustain entirely new interpretations (and re-interpretations).

parallel

“Officials in Lyon, one of the first cities to institute a large technology-driven bike program, estimate that bike-sharing has eliminated tons of pollutants since its inception in 2005. But more than that, they say, it has changed the face of the city. ìThe critical mass of bikes on the road has pacified traffic,î said Gilles Vesco, vice mayor in charge of the program in Lyon. ìNow, the street belongs to everybody and needs to be better shared. It has become a more convivial public space.î

Using all the attributes of electronic membership and subscription, bicycle transportation is proving its relevance to urban traffic congestion. The digital revolution has engendered both an infrastructure and behavior revolution all based on the bicycle. Is this another template for the continuing role of the print book in the context of digital communication?

post kindle

“If you are a reader of this
blog, you may have noticed that there havenít been any posts in a while. Why? Because there are so many blogs on the Kindle these days that itís impossible not to become ìjust another Kindle blog.î For that reason, Iím working on some other plans for this site and will be focusing more on my book and other Kindle topics rather than Kindle news ìas it happens.î

A post Kindle status may be signaled by its assimilation into conventions of reading.
(Amazon blog)

fast food

“For all its convenience, Google’s snippet-view of information flattens knowledge, erasing context. Sometimes truth lies not in the needle but in the haystack.” Nicholas Carr

On-line search, like fast food, has fast delivery. But the provider also encourages fast consumption. And the dinners are never really sure what they are missing.

retrospective future

I became interested in the prospect for print books in the context of screen reading about twenty years ago. At that time I considered the issues to be important to the practice of library preservation and I see their relevance continuing today. This
essay will sketch my own experience of the developments.

onion future

“Days before the January 2001 inauguration of President Bush, the Onion ran a story headlined: “Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity Is Finally Over.’ “Writers at the satirical paper still speak reverentially of the story, in which Bush promises to take the country into a deep recession, worsen the environment and “end the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton.”
Onion News

locust

“Although the locus of scholarly discourse is slowly but clearly moving from bound/printed pages to networked screens, weíve yet to reach the tipping point. The printed book is still the gold standard of the academy. The goal of these projects is to produce born-digital works that are as elegant as printed books and also draw on the power of audio and video illustrations and new models of community-based inquiry ó and do all of these so well that they inspire a generation of young scholars with the promise of digital scholarship.” futureofthebook.org

Producing an on-line publication as elegant as print is one challenge, provoking young scholars to screen publication is another and the two are not necessarily related. There is also a too ready assumption that “the power” of audio and video must be piled on top of the on-line publication rather than assume their own independent roles in digital delivery. Website and Wiki format does compile text, visual, and audio, but this format has not proven a publication mode that supplants scholarly print transmission.

More and more print and screen augment each other. This would indicate that the screen and print are really a single transmission ecology that is producing momentum toward a different kind of book. Counterpoints of print and screen works should be observed in detail to better understand their interaction for cultural transmission and the possibility of an emergence of a new synthesis.