abstract
The book now spans both print and screen formats. Close attention to this circumstance of mixed delivery options reveals a surprisingly complementary and interdependent relation of affordances and a third stance going forward.
Specialty enclaves of library preservation, academic book studies, and studio book arts are moving beyond contentions or “tipping points” to a fulcrum position of interaction between print and screen books. Other, wider sectors of publishers, educators, authors and information technologists are also assembling a composite stance.
Components of the composite stance include continuing print book roles of back-up, mastering and authentication in a context of its own screen delivery. Interplay between screen and print emerges in complements of storage and display, navigation and device access. Persistence and display functions of print are fused together while screen books disengage persistence and display resulting in distinctions of costs, editorial management and reference transactions. Navigational interplays mingle codex manipulations and touch screen prompts each with different implications for neurology and comprehension. Print and screen devices interplay fulfillment services, connectivity and portability. Gratuitous linkage of screen convenience with print displacement is examined as well as other risks to reliable transmission of literary culture.
Projection of a continuing interdependence of print and screen book as a longer-term future for the book is offered. Research agendas, conference reports and a bibliography of publications concerning the future of the book are provided.
prospectus emeritus
For ten dollars and three dollars shipping you can get the book; “Future of the Book A Way Forward” by the editorial staff of futureofthebook.com. Enjoy 90 action packed pages with illustrations and informative paratext. Email request with subject: “book order” to iowa.book.works (at) mchsi (dot) com. Supply shipping address and book will be sent with invoice enclosed.
last laugh
“A newspaper is tactile, engages all the senses, and leads to more immersive reading than what people might do online.” Arun Gupta, OWSJ
Occupied Wall Street Journal has put out a second issue. This paper newspaper is a polished graphic work with Thomas Paine essay copy. Its Kickstarter project funding is wildly successful. OWSJ is another pilot of a new economy where the product is given away while the underlying advocacy is sold. People wish to consume in support of causes that they believe in. It’s a new economy
Meanwhile the street demonstrations feed the news cycle and the media searches for the motive or agenda of the rabble. The actual demand is for new economies beyond and outside the collusion of corporations, banks and politics. Only a good newspaper can express, distribute hand to hand and document for the future such a revolution.