story board
(video of California sand beach)
“Picture a tidewater beach. The surf advances and returns each time tracing itself in the sand. A process is in motion as the ocean laps onto the land grinding sand. Just such an interaction is at work between ourselves and the ideas that we leave on the beach as books. This process works across time on the beaches of culture.”
“Adventure now as naturalists in our investigation of Books to Be. We will observe the present composite of print and screen books, evaluate their evolutions and consider their roles in culture transmission and look for books evolving. While we watch the action of the waves and weather we watch ecology at work.”
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“The bibliographic naturalist in study of emerging books will enlist other disciplines. We select five.”
(diagram of five disciplines with their one line definitions)
“Each of the disciplines is an ocean. We will use only specific aspects and selected methods to address the future of the book. Lets construct our guideline for selective use of much these much wider resources.”
(diagram of five disciplines with branches of topics, ambiguities and roles)
“From each of the five disciplines we will select our topics of interest, remark on any ambiguities or anxieties or inherent conflictions obvious, and then access the roles that each discipline can play in our own composite investigation.”
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“Such a branching diagram depicting a study field is a Ramist device, invented by clueless Peter Ramus in the sixteenth century. The whole diorama of that Ramist escapade is the source of one of the classical works relevant to our particular study. As Adrian Johns remarks in his Forward to the book by Walter Ong; ‘The idea that thinking could be reduced to an act of spatial arrangement and display proved immensely appealing to practicing teachers. In the century between 1550 and 1650 Ramism gained adherents beyond number. When it then vanished as an explicit intellectual cause, it did so not so much because its limitations had become apparent – they has always been that – as because the attitude it embodied had become a prerequisite for the act of thinking itself.’ Let’s return to the beach.”
(video of California sand beach)
“To move forward with our study of the nature of culture and the destiny of books we need more than a technology. We also need a passion and sense of urgency at a moment of ambiguity in the future of the book. We need a symbot.”
(an Islamic manuscript book)
“A simbot is an emergent composite of cyborg relation after the distinctive components have dissolved. Just notice this screen simulation of the rich pattern of an Islamic manuscript. Observe the interplay of the writing, the satin paper and the hand-held mystery of the book. Note also that it is not there.”
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“That’s right, it wasn’t an Islamic manuscript, but a simulation. We need to adjust culture transmission via books to integrate an emergent ecology of print and screen and realize that the composite is a live organism . As a humanist issue we need to engage this symbot, understand origins and projections, and observe the continuing role of the physical book in a context of its own simulation. We are engaging an exciting moment in book history. Welcome to this vantage point!”
way out
You are invited to”The Future of the Book” panel discussion with Robert Bringhurst, Brewster Kahle, Peter Koch, and Harry Reese. Saturday, October 20, 2012 3:45-5:15pm The Koret Auditorium, Main Library, San Francisco Public Library
“The Future of the Book” panel discussion concludes three days of events marking the Book Club of California’s Centennial Symposium entitled “WAY OUT WEST: Fine Printing & the Cultural History of the Book in California.”
“the future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.” Harry Reese
fair use
“The use to which the works in the HDL are put is transformative because the copies serve an entirely different purpose than the original works: the purpose is superior search capabilities rather than actual access to copyrighted material… Plaintiffs’ argument that the use is not transformative merely because defendants have not added anything ‘new’ misses the point.” Judge Baer
If the university libraries were used in the Google capture of their collections they are also saving Google in court. Now the side effect of use of Google book scans by Hathi Trust is the validation of a fair and transformative use. As Google stated at the very beginning, “we are not scanning books for readers”, they are scanning the books for their search engines. So there is another validation layered over the first; this is that screen books and print books are far from fungible.