death of print not
"Between 2002 and 2007, production of traditional titles rose 29% compared to a 313% increase in the on-demand segment resulting in an overall increase of 66% in the five-year period. "
(more)
hits are for squares
Starbucks
provides exclusive release of music. Meanwhile the
cloud envelops Microsoft distribution of business software. While the current
frenzy of news and technologies of hand-held readers probably signals their escape from, rather than fulfillment of, the simulation of print, in the same transition the attributes of self-authentication of tangible print are dawning. Yes, immutability, obvious encompass of content and artifactual witness or provenance of the original are different from contrasting attributes of screen reading.
buffalo wings
The Obermann seminar on Extreme Materialist Readings of the Medieval Book has begun. You can depend on FotB to report on the authentic realizations of the destiny of the codex.
The composition of a medieval book merged its production with its transmission. The activities of manufacture and imaging were nearly synonymous with the activities of use and reading and ritual behaviours of parchment making, writing and recitation intermingled. This integration has been obliterated by industrialization of book production in which the activities of manufacture are unrelated to reading.
template
The euphemism for human divinity; "the word became flesh and dwelt among us", (John 1:14), also perfectly defines the nature of the codex book. That the advent of the two innovations, of concept and medium, are coincident in early Christian history, tell us as much about the "situations of their origin" (of the gospels) as about their "subject". One certainty is that composers of the gospels could read and write and had folded exemplars in hand. Could the template of the exemplar codex have acted in accord with the abstraction of a human manifestation of God?
Such a simple interplay of objects and ideas does not explain the underlying paradox of conveying concepts in physical objects. And, our own perception of the materialist qualities of the book is obscured by our immersion in a flood of manufactured goods and a wasteland of their disposal. But it is a fact that copyists and book makers of the middle ages conveyed to us concepts of Antiquity and of their own times using a refined communication device. If our own digital culture is to be conveyed forward we will also need such a legible, impartial, efficient, dependable and self-authenticating 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?
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