futureofthebook.com

commodity

Publishing houses have established an industry to commoditized books. As with industries generally there is an incentive to grow revenue and market utilizing the installed base infrastructure. As that agenda persists it can obscure other methods to commoditize books.

On-demand photo books, self-publishing, and an expansion of display, or screen book, options and innovative book reading devices have emerged outside of established publishing houses. The publishers are moving to engage such new market opportunities utilizing their capital resources and industrial methods.

Interesting that the book, as such a venerable commodity, should move quickly to new markets and consumerist allures. This has occurred before in book history in correlation with improving literacy. There is now a possibility that the current surge of new book marketeering may be, contrariwise, exploiting some kind of trend toward illiteracy. This is indicated by a shift of product identity from message to medium commoditizing.

The shift is indicated by consumer behavior and industry response. Books are increasingly commoditized as inherently obsolete but verging on fulfillment with the advent of the next graphic technology, display device and self-authoring application. This marketing agenda, so proven generally, eclipses the core product and sells, instead, a treadmill of book services. Inherent in this shift is book disposability, constantly exchanging the present product for the next.

neo geo

“The implications could be startling. If you were to pair one of these with an Espresso Book Machine, you could essentially duplicate an entire book at once in minutes from a standing start. Wouldn’t the medieval monks be jealous?”TeleRead

High-speed image capture from paper sources, and back again to paper, is an interesting sequence and very medieval; every copy has an exemplar. The high-speed imaging of the medieval copyist was bionic, but otherwise the same sequence.

As antiquarian is the motivation. Manuscript book copies were prompted by patron agendas. These were the fingers of an extensive anatomy of institutional agenda including pre-cursive universities. Open on-line courses, a next wave in university enterprise, also echo a medieval model.

Being old doesn’t make digital book transformations less new or the options between source and surrogate less relevant. The take home is the weird persistence of these transactions. There may be a premise hiding here in which books act as geologies of history.

noetic preservation

(reference)

hand-held

The Kindle paperwhite and iPad Mini are fairly indistinguishable as book page displays. (regardless that one is electrophoric and one phosphor) There is a difference between blinking and winking in the page turning, but as book fulfillment devices they are fairly similar. What I find newer is the device connectivity behaviors. These little tablets are taking on a life of their own as silent smart phones. It is as if we tire of communication with our own species and have left the devices to operate their own social network.

books to be

• a project of 3 phases
inviting discipline participation (Phase 1)
taking action steps (Phase 2)
realizing practice (Phase 3)
• phase 1 (2013)
inviting discipline participation
• The current rush of changes in print and screen formats provokes dramatic review of our relationship with books. Academic disciplines prosper as the print book is augmented by screen delivery, associated cloud libraries, ebook collection building, automated index and searching, and screen learning. While all screen book simulations deviate from print conventions the hybrids that emerge reference each other and often resonate with each other. This rapidly developing book landscape is appropriate to situate in media history.
• situated across relevant literature of five disciplines
• 1. Book Studies – the future of books projected from a historical perspective
• 2. Book Technologies – the future of books projected from current product developments
• 3. Book Cognition – future implications of book reading behaviors, habits, and impacts
• 4. Book Preservation – the future of libraries and book collections
• 5. Book Arts – the future of the aesthetics of the book and predictive interpretation of creative work in book format.
• each discipline surveyed to extract
• 1. relevant topics as presented in monographs, articles and papers, conference proceedings, and blogs and forums
• 2. ambiguities and anxieties within each discipline relative to the future of the book
• 3. suggestions of potential roles each discipline can play
• phase 2 (2014)
taking action steps
• We propose to investigate recent episodes in print and screen book interplay. Using perspectives elaborated by electronic literature and media specific studies we intend to investigate the topic popularly know as the future of the book. This topic is already churning in technical and information science forums. We wish to contribute within a context of cognitive humanist study.
• The University of Iowa is well situated to stage a humanist forum on the future of the book. Our departments have already advanced investigation of the material meanings of the book. We also have continuities of achievement in workshops of writing skills, book craft skills and artistic use of the book tool. We can contribute further to prospects for the future of the book.
• we inform advocacy and
construct instructional content
across enclaves of interested people
• book studies specialists
• book production specialists
• public audience
• students – (adding emphasis to the joint SLIS/UICB certificate)
• print and screen book advocates
these enclaves of interested people mobilized in
• blog discussion
• seminar and course work
• reference site hosting
• reference publication
• book production analysis
• mobilized to
• document the Intersection of print and screen formats and observing the interplay of formats within reading communities and markets
• reveal any interdependence of formats that drive a composite book transmission
• phase 3 (2015)
realize practice
• We can advance by taking down partitions between print and screen book affordances and advance to practice that utilizes their interrelations and possible interdependences. Beyond mimicry between print and screen books we need to discover a new composite practices of physical and virtual book use and new sustainability in book transmission. New library preservation services have yet to be realized. Advances of the codex format are inherent.
• we will address risks and opportunities
• positioning the future of the book as a strategic issue in digital humanities
• bridging agendas between library and information science and humanist interest
• bridging agendas of book producers and end users
• distinguishing the University of Iowa in a context of competitive interest in the future of the book across higher education
• practice will investigate
• print repository use
• shifting textbook use
• dynamics of book reformatting
• self publication
• on-demand production
• format innovation
• aesthetic continuities

interacting

The Interacting with Print site is a treasure chest of resource and insight. Andrew Piper and other participants are quickly interviewed on the “prehistory of the present” as we “pass through one bibliographic medium to another”.

diversity

A new normal of book transmission assimilates screen and print together. A dominance of print at the turn of the 20th century has given way to kaleidoscopic patterns of media diversity. An ecological system persists but intersection, interplay and interdependence of formats leaves no specie isolated.

Like metaphors of geo-tectonic science or electorate behavior the diversity determinate, rather than simple causality, is at work. The “conflicted” nature of such a determinant means that book publishers now manage title release to all formats and readers are enthusiastic with the diversity itself. Layer onto that the competitive adaptation of each enclave and we find an exciting paradox of conflicted stability. The action is in between.

s+r

“Ithaka S+R hopes to use the Research Support Services for Scholars projects to help libraries reframe the question of “How can libraries demonstrate the value of existing services and collections?” to “How can libraries offer services that are compelling enough to become university-wide priorities?””

Libraries are strategically situated to appraise interaction of collection formats, measure research trends across formats and define cross-format dependencies.

Collection dependence across formats differs. Art historians maintain vigorous use of print while sciences are completely network transacted. Yet all disciplines need mediation across resource formats. The sciences, far from escape of format partitions, face increasing fragmentation of data media and display. Humanist research and instructional methods are driven from their physical sources.

Librarians alone see these enclaves at work and best appreciate the diversity of resource formats. They are also best situated to appraise interaction and interdependence of formats and, perhaps, to project efficient future delivery of disciplines to users.

obsolete

The book preservation class is entertaining the proposition that preservation is obsolete. As communication systems focus on currency and distribution rather than review and retention the activities of preservation dissipate. A return to oral culture is suggested but lacking earlier regimes of memorized transmission.

Without physical accumulation of documents, passive and deliberate, preservation becomes a transient and more superficial agenda. The persisting activities are partitioned off as communication dispenses with media based production. Now preservation is an activity searching for context and meaning.

Preservation needs to assert itself as a mode of communication. Perhaps we should contend that preservation actions can be distributed as a medium. So how would that work? One approach would be advocacy of diversity of media as requisite of culture transmission. Here preservation as a communication mode would advocate for redundancy, over-lapping technologies, and defined responsibilities between communicators and their messages.

election

The head butting between voters reminds me of interplay between screen and print books. In both cases you can watch the pageant as bi-polar choice but that would mask a much more fundamental barter. Most of the action is in between the alignments.

Say the far alignments, Democrat/Republican or screen/print, are each represented by 10% of the extreme advocates. That leaves 80% between. The majority constituents are then persuaded and allocated on either side by super efficient mobilization. The mobilizing forces are so efficient and so counter-active that they each enlist a perfect half of the 80%.

The situation results in a standoff with a very adverse outcome; neither the nation nor the book can realize the most optimal result of a complementary strength of all partisan affordances working together. If only the 80% were given that option!

photo book

On-demand market shifts include a recent decline of “scrapbooking” popularity and rise of the “photo book”. These trends may not correlate together but they do present dynamics of self-publishing. Scrapbooking is based on unique hand-made books with communal (classroom) production attractions while photo books are based on screen based print production with communal (family and friends) sharing attractions. Photo books are production editions of scrapbooks. As significant is the role of books to mirror communication trends across society.

on-demand

Print-on-demand is a euphemism meaning payment prior to printing. This inverted sequence was enabled by on-line, credit card transaction. This inverted sequence also erased a fundamental risk for publishers.

To achieve this great advantage it was necessary to produce books very quickly and one at a time. Storage in electronic format provided pre-fabrication as the book is virtually produced before it is sold. Streaming, in-line electrostatic production to paper completed the cycle while streaming orders and fulfillment tracking worked on either side of production.

Electronic fulfillment as e-books situated well between orders and fulfillment. However, legacy production to paper presented an obstacle of re-sorting from orders to production batching and, then, re-sorting back to fulfillment. One solution is distributed production to individual work stations. This is the Espresso model with one book produced every 4-5 minutes, less than 100 per day.

Another model is centralized production as represented by Lightning Source. Working for thousands of clients and end user providers one plant produces a book every few seconds; 80,000 per day from 26,000 orders with an average edition size of 2.4.

Print–on-demand is now the dominating method of book production in terms of titles and monographic specialties such as scholarly works and self-published photo books. Trends suggest that the production mode is sustainable while innovations in printing (imaging), papermaking, (display surface), and binding (commodification) are yet to be realized. Unforeseen influences from this silent revolution will influence book transmission, adoption of screen graphics and evermore efficient print production.

pathway

For years FotB has sustained a blunt debate with screen book advocates. We have always hoped for more than head butting. Two recent publications offer a pathway. Books A Living History by Martyn Lyons provides a rich diorama of the most fascinating illustrations expertly arrayed. Captions and text literally dance between with picture-like periods at the right page turning. Triumphal as well is, This is not the end of the book; presenting a stunning conversation between Jean-Claude Carriere and Umberto Eco.

missile missal

“…never before has anyone developed a full-fledged theory of how, why, and with what effects language evolved from a gestural system to the spoken word.” (blurb)

An old FotB fantasy sees the book as a missile. This precepts sees the pre-cursive hominid habit of throwing rocks as similar to book authoring with its careful calculation and trajectory that launches a work with an intention of stunning readers. The book is thrown across time and cultures. This is not a fully developed scenario.

Between rocks and books there are details such as the advent of language. A useful book providing details is From Hand to Mouth, by Michael Corballis. This work discusses the development of spoken language from origins as panoplies of gestures. This approach provides the bridge between rocks and books as gestures of throwing and tool making that took on symbolic meaning.

An incubation of verbal language across a long evolution of human communication supported primarily by gesture evokes another inherent book pattern. This is a series of manual actions needed to materialize thought. This extrapolation is quickly associated with tool making but could also be extended to gestures that produce signs of meaning.

Here an eerie implication emerges. The long gesture-based incubation of spoken language that then provoked language recording can be compared with a recent transition from counting, to inscription, to keyboard composition. So the origin of language is more than a passing story. Gesture rose to the complexity and utility of language, then gesture as augmented with vocalization was elaborated into speech producing a composite of gestured verbal communication, verbal communication was extended with writing, writing was augmented by recording and recording resulted in products such as books and the web, and these compiled into libraries.

johanna

Here was a book art lecture; a soliloquy in a strident voice that was not taxonomically correct and without mention of the strength of the subject to command the stage. With heroic subjects we should find the tools that suit our own work. And with Johanna there are plenty of wrenches to tighten and loosen the course of the future of the book.

The performative role of book transmission is one. Here is the tool to merge print and screen into a single system. The vantage point of paratext, imaging, display surface and end user commodity all in motion together gives us a way forward. Art is fine as far as fine art goes, but give me the strength of insight every time. Johanna is a teacher. She is the Bill Clinton of books to be.

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.

penumbra

“…operating at the intersection of books and technology…” Epilogue

Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan offers a fantasy story of the very transgressions that we anticipate. This as adventure escapade of intersection between the future and the past of books. It is filled with characters that we know and interplay that we observe, if not engage.

Here I am with the Kindle PaperWhite. It is paper bright, light and thin. Delicate to the touch and to the accidental or inept touch; it is responsive to bionic actions. It also has a bit of hubris of its own as it is certain that I need an amazing Amazon Denim fashion to go out into Coralville, IA. (A commercial presence within books, faded since the 19th century, has returned.)

It is almost essential to read this book on screen display. Without that reflexive reference to the experience the reader can feel displaced. As with other eye/machine read transaction, you need to enter both doors at the same time. Either a paper reader or screen approach alone will feel displaced and over-critical of details. And how is the PaperWhite paper like? How is it and how is it not? This fantasy balances exactly in between in our own terrain.

duh…

Turn your copy shop into book production. Or, why not, turn your own laser printer into a publishing enterprise.

fence

“Surrogates are often suggested in order to mitigate damage and exposure of the physical objects. This solution however is controversial. Some have embraced this practice while others refuse to make the switch. This discussion will delve into each side of the issues, uses, and needs of surrogacy in collections. We are looking to include perspectives from within as well as outside the field that are impacted by the use of surrogates, digital and physical. Which side of the fence are you on?” email, AIC

Sounds like a false choice and a bedraggled binary premise for the panel of the Archives Conservation Discussion Group (ACDG) of the AIC Book and Paper Group now styled as: “Is it Real? The Value and Ethics of Using Surrogates.” Why not discuss how source and surrogate transform each other? Why not discuss a “new normal” of physical and screen access complementing each other, or detracting? Why not discuss archival transmission as a complex, time-based process dependent on both source and surrogate?

Conservators have an obligation to help define composite source/surrogate roles and can discuss precepts such as re-mastering, authentication, deficiencies of surrogate imaging conventions, enhancing source legibility, on-demand and sustainable source and surrogate interaction, source treatment options for non-damaging surrogation, etc..

lrts marc

“As people shift to the web as their first point of discovery, library resources need to be represented there.” “The Academy Unbound”, LRTS 56(4).

The library community is leaking the collections to the web. Linked open data (LOD) refers to mash-up of library utilities and publication of their files conveyed in a resource description framework( RDF) as URLs. So we come to the eclipse of MARC citation and closed utility databases. LOD will take on a life of its own.

Turns out that one deficiency of library cataloging was lack of whole text. This was also its strength as bionic librarians acted as discovery channels cascading the citations alone. An iota here is that I read about it in the paper edition 56(4).

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.”

(auto reframe to black)
“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.”

(auto frame to black)
“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.”

(auto frame to black)
“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.

lu ten

Linotype University brought line casters from all over including California, Nova Scotia, Missouri, Kansas, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Arizona and Iowa. It was fun and agony…the best learning situation!

template

A template for discussion of trends in book transmission can begin with an image derived from printing, a substrate derived from paper and a commodity derived from bookbinding. Both print and screen books can be considered following this template.

With the physical book the printing has been somewhat privileged as a crucial component. Perhaps printing is viewed as an “agent of change” in book transmission because it is more easily associated with words and content. Discussion of the role paper as the substrate for printing is typically reduced in relation to printing and crucial discussion of book commodification is almost absent.

If we address book transmission as conveyed by screen books a very curious inversion of emphasis can be observed. With electronic books commodification suddenly gets most attention as discussion centers on nooks, Kindles and iPads. These consumer devices evoke the most interest while the imaged content fades as a transient stream of electrophor or phosphor appearances. No mention of the glass display substrate is made at all.

This strange outcome of print and screen books comparison may suggest their different roles in book transmission overall. The print book is most associated with content because its content transmission is so effective while the screen book is more associated with device commodity because that materiality persists as content display changes.

paperwhite

This latest paperwhite eink electrophor device gets closer to paper contrast as well as full grey zone rendering. This is my fourth Kindle. The first two were original G3 connectors and the last two are wi-fi. The navigation on the paperwhite is hybrid with touch toggle for page scroll or page turn. It is lighter and thinner and smaller in a progression familiar with all hand held devices. There is also a screen lighting that manages all levels of ambient illumination.

Shopping fulfillment is refined with an evocation of adventure within a mall. Even in this black, dedicated book reading environment, the allure of distractive shopping opportunities is close at hand. At the same time the book reading function is also refined with choice of font, type size and margin allowance. Little amenities of library tagging of progression in given titles and some kind of touch annotation (that I miss-prompt as a page turn) are welcome.

It is interesting how the black, electrophor nook and Kindle devices flirt with their complimentary color, phosphor devices. There is a meta-expectation established in screen decors, screen touch zones and chassis grips. There is also a strange counter market as searchers are redirected to print titles not available in the Amazon utility.

accreditation

How accredited is the future of the book as an authentic humanist research agenda? We know it crosses interests of book studies, book technologies, cognitive aspects of reading, library preservation and book arts. But is it capable of advancement as a decisive research agenda on its own?

Can the future of the book as a research agenda find premise and continuity? The future of the book, by definition, appears to reach for inaccessible evidences and metrics. At the same time accentuated projection and speculation abbreviates regard for the past. Screen book advocates can view history as something that is yet to occur.

How can a more complete projection across past, present and future accredit future of the book research? To begin with it can be realized that the paradigm shifts that provoke our current composite print and screen book transmission occurred in the 19th century. These included the advents of instantaneous communication, audio and photographic recording, digital encoding, and mass media. Our current century has only managed the integration of these fundamental innovations.

We can also advance by taking down partitions between print and screen book affordances and advance to the study of their interrelations and possible interdependences. Obvious topics of paratext apparatus, complementary function fulfilling a new definition of book transmission, cognitive attractions of composite book use, and new library services have yet to be realized. Beyond mimicry between print and screen books we need to discover a new composite medium of authentic physical and virtual electronic books.

text neck

“While 75% of the world’s population spends hours daily hunched over their handheld devices with their heads flexed forward, they are all in constant danger and at risk of developing Text Neck. The frequent forward flexion causes changes in the cervical spine, curve, supporting ligaments, tendons, and musculature, as well as the bony segments, commonly causing postural change. Among the chief complaints associated with Text Neck are pain felt in the neck, shoulder, back, arm, fingers, hands, wrists and elbows, as well as headaches and numbness and tingling of the upper extremities.”

The malady of text neck is a syndrome of complaints associated with tension induced in the neck as derived from the fixed grip of a reading device. The focal length hand-held position is the same as with printed books but the variable sizes, weights and manipulative variations of print books are absent. In their place is the frozen grip of the e-device that induces the neck tension.

information stimulus

TeleRead has a good scroll this morning including a David Rothman synopsis on public library e-book access. Among his approaches is library purchase of Overdrive. He is concerned that the digital public library traffic will be leaked away by other free access. There is also a fun item on home book scanning with unlibrary incentives, but not unreader interests.

killer app

From Bob Stein’s Sophie to Peter Meyers Breaking the Page, thoughtful futurists have visualized a native electronic book. The dawning of this species is yet to emerge as screen books still mimic print books.

Less apparent is the infiltration of print books among screen readers. These infiltrations range from Espresso books, to photo books, to the shadow print versions of ebooks. Such infiltration is not surprising; the nimble print app has been adapting quickly to readers’ needs for two millennia. It was print production and print library utilities that first exploited digital technologies and distribution of means of production downward to end-users powered a photo copier and print scanner wave still with us. Print books were not born yesterday and print books, now all born digital, grow up happily in the screen world.