futureofthebook.com

souvenir

A souvenir is a reminder. That is a relation that may apply to displacement of paper books from schools, churches and libraries. Such displacement has not occurred, but is eagerly awaited. Bring your own tablet to school, screen read hymnal and scripture and load your research. An implication is that paper books will still be there, but will be acting as souvenirs.

Perhaps the schoolhouse bell, the church steeple, the library columns are souvenirs. Places can be displaced by remote courses, on-line congregations and cloud libraries. A transition is completed when life is a souvenir and we live out our time on-line looking at the screen.

I recall an enchanting Baptist sermon as the minister drew a view of crosses on a hill using colored chalks. As he finished the lights were turned off and, behold, the crosses glowed in the dark. We will certainly enjoy the future as well.

Technologies, including books of all formats (paper and screen), augment our experiences of learning (school), spirituality (church) and community (library). With books a template of image, (print, phosphor, electrophor) display surface (paper, polymer, glass) and artifact commodity (book binding, Kindle, iPad) is at work. Each variation on that template trilogy complements the others.

A place of atoms and ideas is where we are. How they go together is a big secret.

What can be said about the relation of atoms and ideas is that action between can be asymmetrical as is nicely illustrated by the paper or screen book. As for a synthesis we can consider Stephan Wolfram when he contends that the universe is information.

rent to own

Consider a book template that links print, paper and binding or, say, phosphor image, screen display and hand-held device. Using this template of image, display and commodity it is apparent that print components cannot be separated while screen book components cannot be fused together. This distinction modifies ownership since with print you must purchase the linkage while with screen books you must purchase variable configurations.

array

There is a wonderful array of Carr commentaries just now at Rough Type. Zero fluff, news fit to print, and investigative insight. Every era has utopian advocates of a steady state, every digital super-cessionist imagines revolution independent of revenue support from the installed base and every screen instructional experience will be tracked.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2012 at 6:40 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.