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.