multiple providers
A content delivery churn forcing consumers to straddle multiple providers is retarding the advance of screen reading. The divisive effect is especially disruptive when it continuously rearranges readers by age. With the book there is only a single provider; the codex format.
rum ba-ba
This
1994 conference predates the materiality of the book since it then had little immateriality.
death watch glee
Screen reading advocates enjoy tracking decline of print formats such as decline of print newspapers or book stores. They are less active at watching decline of screen formats such as those based on analog magnetic and computer media. They also tend to disregard television trends, once the most popular network based screen format. Screen reading advocates should perhaps take a note from librarians and look to growing interactions of print and screen reading.
oddly matched agendas
Denominational authorization and entreprenurial promotion were two agendas of historical printing in the Amana Colonies. Oral testimonials of Pietist spirituality needed reformatting as did product packaging for blankets, medicines and flour. Among the industrious Colonists printing was perhaps their most diverse product.
Wide communication agendas signal transition from the 19th century to our own times. Today each of us receives as much paper print daily as many prior to the advent of digital publishing received in a month. Unfortunately the discard of unwanted junk paper mail also mirrors inefficiencies of on-line reading.
codex companion of consciousness
Matt Brown's
new book is an adventure into the prospects for book studies. With wonderful expression and integration it moves beyond the curtain of "print culture" into the kinetic and conceptual ergonomic of book possession; the codex acts on the reader as the orator of its text. This is a novel historical novel with awesome powers of persuasion.
"But here is my wager: if I can convince you that the physical property of texts - their visual appearance, tactile feel, and oral performance - were central to a society conventionally understood as iconophobic and ascetic, where communication is in the "plain style" and where expressive aesthetics are feared, then the case for book history's significance will be all the stronger when we turn to indviduals and societies where such conditions do not prevail."
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