leaf master
“With optical scans, voters fill out a paper ballot that is then read by computer — much like a standardized test. The votes are counted quickly and efficiently by computer, but the paper ballot remains the official vote, which can then be recounted by hand.”
New legislation pending will require paper ballots in federal elections. The role of the authenticating paper sounds just like the continuing library role of print in the context of digital delivery.
hybrid book
I scouted around for info on the recent Hybrid Book conference. Like the CBAA annual, these conferences play out the interaction as if the encounters were electronic blogs. This is strange territory. For book artists who have license of the rich legacy of books and some appreciation of qualities of its physical materiality it is dangerous territory.
The hybrid book tangles the wrestling of paper and screen. Someone should mention how bias book artists are to physical products and how dependent they are on virtual screen representation of their products. The best approach may be, taking one example, to define the relevance of letterpress printing to screen drawing and visa versa. Then compound issues of self-authentication of real books could be better hybridized with their electronic delivery.
electronic textbooks
The surge toward or away from electronic textbooks has the same old vectors. These are navigation, legibility and persistence. Persistence is not an issue of centuries, but of a single hour of classroom battery life. As for navigation, the Bible previously was our only un-paginated book, but now e-textbooks pop -up classroom and assignment chaos from lack of consistent pagination and dexterity moves. Then there is legibility, which is not resolution, but immediacy of meaning. Here loading times, cross-volume reference, illustration simulation are sidebars to cooperative role of the text for learning. The immediacy of meaning is migrating to reading, listening and watching activities not delivered by dedicated hand-held devices. (more)
A new book on social experience of technological transition, Kirkpatrick, Technology and Social Power is an amazing study of the social dimension and social theory that actually manages the course of technology. It is relevant not just to textbooks, but to all books. Screen or paper is unimportant compared with transition in the social role of textbooks.