re-listening, re-reading
Comparisons between the music recording industry and the text recording industry are frequent whenever transitions from analog to electronic products are discussed. True, the pace and consequence of the transition has appeared first in music compared with the transition in books although this has not forestalled the linkage.
But let’s focus on re-reading and re-listening to provide another perspective. There is little question that users listen to given works of music over and over. It is possible that the greatest reward and appreciation of music is based on re-listening? The re-reading perspective is a bit different. With books the reward and appreciation is shifted a bit more to communities whose members may read a given book only once but they find reward and appreciation from multiple interpretations derived from individual readers. Such a dynamic of re-reading produces other books, engendering a cycle.
In both sectors there is a dependence on the assured recorded status of the music or text. As the recorded music industry, much to its un-profitability, has transitioned from analog to electronic product, the recoded status has moved from discs to clouds. If books also shift from print to screen in a similar way will print libraries be transformed into clouds?
It may resolve that users have some say in all this and the issues of re-listening and re-reading may be consequential. The multiple use function of music and books may be dependent on different kinds of recording. Why not transform all libraries, music and books, to the cloud? Here selection of the analog or electronic recording format may be influenced by efficiencies of re-use; of assured re-listening and assured re-reading.
see saw
It amazing how few books are produced on papyrus today and how few are not produced from digital files. Jason Epstein covers such inevitable divides of book production in his recent essay (NY Review of Books, March 11). He also manages the defenses of the physical book copy and laments the electronic mash-up of these entities. But this kind of marching gets us nowhere and certainly cannot advance a pro-print position.
Another approach, most obvious and promising, is to contend and illustrate the interdependence of print and screen reading. We intuitively know the screen attributes of self-indexing, live search and discovery and the print attributes of self-authentication, back-up and mastering. Print also fairs well in exclusive attributes of legibility, navigation and persistence yet concedes others such as finger moves for touch screen navigation.
The point being that Epstein could better invest in the logics of interdependence of print and screen and perhaps project the real revolution of print and screen as a single, composite text delivery system.
That said, we can counter list attributes exclusive to either print or screen books. Print attributes of fixity, mechanical navigation, materiality and persistent re-access across time all pair nicely with screen attributes of live content, automated search, cloud repository and electronic delivery. Another great pair of print and screen attributes is revealed by the self-authenticating nature of the print book contrasted with the self-indexing nature of the screen book. The print book carries with it layers of physical evidence, overt content and bibliographic codes that reveal the source and intent of its production. Screen books have layers of codes quite different. In addition to enabling alphabetic screen display these codes also enable indexing of elements of content and electronically speed delivery of keyword search and discovery across collections of books.
What else? The fixity of print accords with reliable re-reading. A transience of screen content accords with a need for currency. Legibility is impaired by network interruption and browser defaults while print paginations and content parsing by manual indexing are limited analog aids. Yet both screen connectivity and print insularity resolve conflicting needs to maintain bibliographic entities and to dissolve them. Finally there is an inherent interdependence of screen simulation with print sources even as screen access supercedes print access. These functions of print back-up in case of server interruption and print mastering in case of new queries not resolved by the screen simulation provides a perfect indication of interdependence and a logic of a composite text delivery system.
if:book is
The US if:book is very quiet, almost a month since last posting. Meanwhile TeleRead roars on with a dozen posts per day. If you want some dot org Bookfutures action, go to the UK futureofthebook.