futureofthebook.com

self-indexing

Walt Crawford’s Cites and Insights is Google indexed. It works well, but how can this corpus of historical review of the transitions of libraries and book transmission be used? The old FotB saw suggests that the counterpoint of self-indexing is self-authentication and this is a bridge that can be crossed two ways. A prime agenda is authentication of the influence of magnification, a distortion to which all media based discourse is vulnerable. Is “news” well managed or does its management engender managed news?

Walt provides our most comprehensive, skilled and insight enriched news of the transitions of libraries and book transmission. Perhaps Google Search can confirm the excellence of his news management.

rejected

“Thank you for your submission to the “Ebooks as Bibliographical
Objects” panel. I received over a dozen proposals and had to make
tough choices. Yours was not among the papers I am accepting.”

> A Logic of Their Interdependence: Complementary Attributes of the Print and Screen Book
>
> “The lively connectivity of the screen is an attribute but the constraint of print is an attribute as well.”
>
> This presentation will consider the logic of interdependence between the paper and e-book renditions of the same title. Precedent for interdependence between print and screen is provided by the era of newspaper microfilming. Today interdependence between paper and e-books emerges in a context of intensive screen delivery of print collections generally. Synergistic (1) device navigation, (2) marketing and retailing, (3) delivery format and classroom logistic indicate a persistent interaction. E-book market response now prompts print-on-demand sales and library certification of digital imaging of books prompts certification of print masters. The complementary nature of print and screen editions is confirmed as self indexing screen and self authenticating print both prove strategic to research. The presentation will illustrate each sub topic.

Its always fun to surmise if the topic of the strategic future of print will infringe or not infringe the strategic future of e-books. It is also fun to sense the strictures that each camp imposes on wider views.

scrolling forward

“Trained in computer sciences at Stanford, Levy was a researcher at Xerox/PARC and a practitioner of calligraphy and bookbinding before taking up the library sciences appointment at Washington. He is the author of Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age and his current work calls for an information environmentalism to parallel movements in climate control and environmental sustainability in the natural world.”

David Levy presented an excellent lecture on the advent of the computer based writing system. He was there and he was tempered by another training in crafts and calligraphy. Now he is taking his attentive approach to another agenda. Why have libraries always allured us with their aura of a place for contemplation and how can that mood shift readjust a sense of information overload, speed-up, fragmentation and distraction?

He has applied for an IMLS planning grant to introduce workshops of mindfulness and contemplation to busy libraries. Already librarians are drawn to his challenge to find a new Zen of on-line connectivity. Together this quiet permaculture, native to libraries, will turn an addiction into a surge of personal fulfillment.

prairie lights

President Obama made a visit to Iowa City yesterday. He stopped in at Prairie Lights bookstore and if you look at the NYT front page picture you will see him at a photo moment holding up Rove and Romney print books. Imagine him achieving this iconic moment with electrophoric devices.

There really is no particular linkage between e-book growth and indie book store prospects. Amazon is actually using e-book sales to predict print sales. And both print-on-demand and ultra high speed print copy scanning suggest new two-way transactions between paper to screen and screen to paper in a larger growth of book reading.

two curves

Presented in terms of US trade sales in dollars this chart plots screen books as a percent of total publication. Note the composite growth and, perhaps, some unapparent hand-off between genres less well suited to print and more suited to screen. A healthy overall publishing industry is suggested.

slow reading

This little book, Slow Reading, by John Miedema tracks though the logic of the future of print very gracefully. “All this points to an emerging model in which digital representations of books can be viewed as metadata for finding print books”

ripping books

This high speed scanner for the fanned book suggests an even more persistent role of print in the digital discourse. This is the reformat on demand activity without any overhead for digital storage or repository access.

coincidence

A newly published work is an English language calligraphic rendering of the Gospel of Thomas done by Carol Nichols. A translation by Marvin Meyer provided the exemplar. Among its many consequences, this Gospel of Thomas is considered the earliest transcription of the sayings of Jesus and a pre-cursive literary format of canonic Christian Gospels. As a transcription of teachings of Jesus it also projects the witness role that early apostles played and the meaning of the name Thomas as “twin”, or brother, only adds focus to this transaction.

The book signing for the new edition by occurred on Thursday, 18 March in Quincy, Illinois. Attendance and excitement was high with a long line in the book store. Representatives of the Center for the Book were there and presented Carol with a papyrus replica of a fourth century Nag Hammadi codex. But an eerie note followed on the second day as Joyce and Gary wandered up the River on the Illinois side.

We were in the same region where the Mormon founder Joseph Smith had translated Egyptian papyri. Some of these translations, from papyri that he purchased with a mummy in 1835, appeared in print during the churn of Mormon and Anti-Mormon media in Hancock County in the 1840’s. So the 2010 calligraphic publication of the Gospel of Thomas in English added coincidence to the literary history of this region of the Mississippi valley.

We then visited the Carthage Jail where Joseph and Hyrum Smith were killed. They had been arrested for destroying an anti-Mormon press. It was with the death of Hyrum that a final coincidence is suggested. If the brother had lived, in a quick metaphor that would have been easy for the Latter Day Saints, he could have produced a counterpart Gospel of Thomas along the Illinois side at Nauvoo.

green books

Paper consumption has increased six-fold over the past 50 years and print book publishing remains steady. The climbing curve of paper consumption will probably overshoot the now flattening energy consumption curve (US per capita). Decline of oil supply will probably speed descent of energy consumption increasing cost of paper and its conversion products. Energy conservation choices may well favor screen based connectivity and reading material delivery. Counter indicators, favoring continued print reading in energy expensive context include its single, one time cost for assured storage and access, its life cycle attributes of renewable resource, recycle technology and biodegradability, inertia of academic authorship and various legibility, navigation and authentication attributes. In the mid-term run, discounting different rates of growth as projected from large or small installed bases, both print and screen reading consumption may continue to grow.

post-digital

There is an interesting book, Inside the Neolithic Mind, which explores the capacity of mind to assimilate into daily life constructs of another realm. The thesis of the book is that mental constructs are pre-cursive to revolutions and their cultural manifestations in ritual actually set the stage for emergence of technologies such as agriculture and architecture (not the other way around). This is a useful interpretive approach and it can be applied to the advent of the digital revolution.

In all such conceptualization it is also exciting to realize cycles of return, repeat and resurgence. Permaculture provides a resurgent regard for a modeling of society, agriculture and energy use based on natural ecological systems with a focus on their sustainability. This movement and practice with Neolithic elements is jumping on to the stage of the 21st century planetary apocalypse.

The Permaculture movement can also provide a sidebar for the future of the book. For example, the FotB approach, with its investment in a logic of interdependence of screen and print, is a stealth version of Permaculture. Here we work toward sustainable culture transmission. This forest gardening involves enclaves of format workers and planting of all kinds of natives and hybrids. Here an ecology of vigorous interdependence and complementary productivities is latent. But suburban mono-culturist, techno determinist and proprietary forces are at work as well. Stay tuned.

The Future of the Book seminar is scheduled for August 31 to October 5th (Tuesday evenings). Be there and be square.

three logics

“As a hybrid of traditional books and digital technology, the ereader is ideally suited for the dual purposes of reading and writing.” John Miedema

This is the most generative comment I have ever encountered concerning the future of the book. We can add just one more logic, but these two come before. (1) screen based book reading is optimized by careful device dedication including synthesis of digital connectivity, search, and display with constraints of print (2) a natural interplay of writing and reading on the screen echoes a classical negotiation from manuscript to print, (3) going forward, there is an underlying interdependence between screen and paper.

print book diaspera

The ALA has a statement on the future. These perspectives from the library community on information technology and the 21st century libraries reposition the interplay of culture transmission. Now the opportunities and challenges must be posed in terms of screen display, community connectivity and engine access. As the space of a virtual library expands, the space of the print library must contract.

As with other space and time projections there is uncertainty and a suspension of causality but print books are displaced to their own diaspera. Here they must naturalize in strange countries. Happy refugees will regroup but without familiarity of numbers or social shelf rank. And other futures will foresee new homelands.

Now we will see who is mobile; the digital natives, digital nomads and their enclaves or the old mountain print books. As print disperses to its own natural enclaves, to strict communities and devotional choices for paper copy, we will realize again a resilience of the codex among sectarians. Libraries “will be responsible for managing both a static book collection and the dynamic content created by networked books” but refugee print has been there before in a mobile interdependence between print and screen.

Perhaps print will navigate this transition better than we think. Maybe print will explain the virtual library and its role. The libraries should at least be attentive to such an intrusion. That would be a hoot; when homeless print books return post-digital.

ibtds (interdependent book text delivery system)

• Attributes of format: Both screen connectivity and print insularity resolve conflicting agendas either to maintain bibliographic entities or to dissolve them. The functions of immobile print collection back-up and mastering provide a counterpart for screen collection mobility and mutability.
• Attributes of access: Print attributes of fixity, mechanical navigation, and persistent re-access across time all pair nicely with screen attributes of live content, automated search, cloud repository and electronic delivery.
• Attributes of resource: 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 that enable display and indexing of elements of content and electronically speed delivery of keyword search and discovery across collections of books. The self-authenticating nature of the print book is a complement of the self-indexing nature of the screen book.

(th)ink conference

“Book industry will continue to grow slowly through 2020. Digital will grow 36% in 2014 and end up at 60% by 2020. Revenues from digital will eventually surpass revenues from print and see many more small players as barriers to entry are removed. Ereaders in use: 2010 15m unit installed base forecast, by 2020 861 million installed base. Unit prices of ereaders will fall to under $100 by 2015 and this is when the market will really take off.” TeleRead post from e-book conference.

The tipping point is history and TeleRead postings are surging. For the moment all the e-book titles are still related to their parent paper, but virgin e-books may also be lurking in publisher marketing plans. With the newly installed base of reading devices and opened display formats the book delivery services will also expand and diversify. GoodReads is an example gathering enclaves of readership and networks.

The tipping point is also apparent in the contrast between TeleRead and if:book. While Teleread posts dozens of leads each day, if:book has dwindled to one post a month. TeleRead is hitched to the retail market place for book reading while if:book is lurking in academia where the long view is at work. One forum is jumping and the other is waiting to pounce.

new orbits, digital planet

The Council on Library and Information Resources is focused on the changing nature of library services. Many intensive studies and their reports are just out or available next month.

“A three-report volume will examine key issues in the research library’s transition from an analog to a digital environment for knowledge access, preservation, and reconstitution. The volume will include an introductory essay by CLIR President Charles Henry, followed by three reports: Can a New Research Library be All-Digital? Lisa Spiro and Geneva Henry, On the Cost of Keeping a Book, Paul Courant and Matthew “Buzzy” Nielsen, Ghostlier Demarcations: Large-Scale Text Digitization Projects and their Utility for Contemporary Humanities Scholarship, report of a CLIR investigation”

“The report, Sustainable Economics for a Digital Planet: Ensuring Long-term Access to Digital Information, is the result of a two-year inquiry into the economic challenges of preserving an ever-increasing amount of information in a world gone digital. “ Report

happy haptic

“You’re not crazy, and neither are we: The touchscreen on the Apple iPhone really is more responsive than the screens on the BlackBerry Storm, the Motorola Droid, the Nexus One and many other phones, even though all of these devices use essentially the same touch-sensing hardware.” Wired

Flick, slide and pinch; elements of the touch screen navigation are acquired and refined from a general primate dexterity and haptic of hands prompting the mind. What is fascinating is this new navigational choreography reminds us of refinements of paper book navigation and it results from the same attentive and skilled intentions of the device maker.

So, for a second, to take an analog approach, do distinctive maneuvers of touch paper and touch screen navigation suggest a differing optimal display routine for the extensive and cohesive content of the book? Yes, they do. And we already know the correlation of haptic routine and display format for paper books. So it should be possible to solve for x.

connectivity

The April Cites and Insights is a 30 page exposition on disregard of connectivity and refocus on connective action. Sometimes Walt is an avatar of disconnectivity and going to Walt at Random can be an all night bus ride. But the regular post, screen version of double column print, of Cites and Insights is a wake-up. I enjoy the bouncing ball scrolling up and down to fill out the columns and the excellent pdf shadow edge between tail and head of the pages. But best of all is Walt’s great sweep of library Zen and the mixed attributes of digital collections delivery and blog based communications between librarians.

wheel of fortune

I guess I have a special problem. In preparation for an afternoon forum on the future of the book I am reading five different electrophoric display devices at the same time. This is different from reading five different books and each device will demonstrate a different connectivity, download application and display format. Why I don’t know, but this interactive portion will follow a stately presentation on the collapse of five industries in the automotive, finance, representative governance, music recording and print publishing sectors. Here a communality of disaster derived from innocent screen delivery of previously physical product.