zero sum
Why do screen reading advocates frequently assume that continuation of print genres is at the expense of screen reading? Why do
they assume that any shift away from capital intensive printing will never shift back to less centralized, less costly local print genres? And why is the rapture displacement to screen reading always 12-18 months in the future?
medieval book
"The digital Dark Age is a term used to describe a possible future situation where it will be difficult or impossible to read historical documents, because they have been stored in an obsolete digital format. This could cause the period around the turn of the 21st century to be comparable to the Dark Ages during the Middle Ages in the sense that there will be a relative lack of written record." Wikipedia
But if the Western middle ages were dark there was also the bright spot of the medieval book. If our own digital culture is to be conveyed forward we will also need such a legible, impartial, efficient and dependable device. For reliable transmission of knowledge across time and cultures, which technology, that of the medieval book or that of computer media, is more advanced?
(more)
realizing bibliographic utility
"The question then becomes, "How much of a paper document do you need to 'capture' in order to identify the digital version of it unambiguously?" The answer is quite remarkable. In most cases, instead of scanning and processing every page of a document, you only need to capture about six words. In short, any snippet of already-existing text in a document becomes an identifying barcode. Because the capture involves only a small amount of text, it identifies both the document and a location within that document."
Exbiblio confirms the premise of screen based library utility based on discrete screen search of print.
Satie of the book
"Far from being writers - founders of their own place, heirs of the peasants of earlier ages now working on the soil of language, diggers of wells and builders of houses - readers are travelers; they move across lands belonging to someone else, like nomads poaching their way across fields they did not write, despoiling the wealth of Egypt to enjoy it themselves. Writing accumulates, stocks up, resists time by the establishment of a place and multiplies its production through the expansionism of reproduction. Reading takes no measures against the erosion of time (one forgets oneself and also forgets), it does not keep what it acquires, or does so poorly, and each of the places through which it passes is a repetition of the lost paradise." Michel de Certeau
same text, different meaning
"Textual criticism is not a branch of mathematics, nor indeed an exact science at all. It deals with a matter not rigid and constant, like lines and numbers, but fluid and variable; namely the frailties and aberrations of the human mind, and of its insubordinate servants, the human fingers." A.E. Housman
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