turning the corner
“Storage. preservation, access – book technology serves all these purposes well and, crucially, it serves them simultaneously. …To the extent that we carry over the same stock of assumptions into our attitude to digital objects, we risk endangering their very survival. This is a problem that computer scientists, librarians, publishers, scholars and funding agencies must all confront. What constitutes digital preservation? What distinguishes preservation from access, surrogacy or authenticity? How do we even know whether a digital object is authentic?” Marilyn Deegan and Katherine Sutherland, Transferred Illusions – Digital Technology and the Forms of Print
This is the greatest book I have ever read. And my awe is not just for the preservation insights and the whole chapter on “Durable Futures”. This is the study that defines the interdependence of paper and screen as we move forward with cultural transmission. We cannot have one without the other.
The authors’ argument for the strategic role of libraries is particularly well evaluated. “The problem here is that now the paradigm for the universal library is not a library at all, it is the Internet. The implicit question seems to be, ‘why can’t libraries be more like the Internet, filled with cool information that we can all have for free?’ Our response is ‘why can’t the Internet be more like libraries, organized, classified and with powerful filters in place?’
We appear to be turning a corner. Moving from inconclusive interplay between paper and screen, analog print and electronic digital transmission, to more of a death grip or lively interdependence. There are reasons that we need to convey conceptual works via physical objects. Separate functions of self-authentication of print and self-indexing of electronic text comprise a single transmission ecology. The stakes are high, defining “how readers think”. Save the planet.
Deegan and Sutherland turn other corners too. How did the “materiality” of print suddenly jump into focus in book studies? It was always there, but it appears that a struggle to assign materiality to electronic transmission has parsed it out of a previous camouflage. “Most unexpected of all is the way the materiality of our traditional literary culture (the functions of type, paper, format, book structures, and so on) has come into sharper focus in the new electronic environment; how the ‘going’ of the book and the ‘coming’ of the book share a moment in our cultural consciousness.” This is the first mention of “book structures” in the same sentence with “literary culture”. Can a further awareness of book action, navigational dexterity, adaptive neurology of reading, and pre-cursive cursors be far off? The authors do elegantly study why paper text typography features serifs and screen text is sanserif.
“This is a book, conceived in conversation, written on screen and delivered as paper, which proposes to consider the interpenetration of print and electronic representations of text since the late twentieth century.” The legacy profiles as well as some flings at media gurus are rich. The utilization of historical book studies narrative is lively and terse as are the contests between geeks and librarians and the inversions of assumptions and unforeseen futures are startling. There are very situated and strategic references.
This is an amazingly expensive book and the production is crappy. It is too bad that such a magnificent work toys with counter demonstration of its own premise. I hope it eventually goes to a trade edition where it can be used in course work.
iconic book cover, 1876
This image tatoo (at the top of the posting) is from Richard Minsky’s blog. This potent image counter narrates any text. Here is the same strength of art as exemplified by Richard himself.