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Observations:“Future of the Book in the Digital World”

These observations derive from insights in the Clifford Lynch essay in First Monday 6/6, 2001.

Observations

Once all books were produced in letterpress. Within the last fifty years that production process has been converted to off-set printing. Today there are only rare, elite uses of letterpress for book production. Indeed, collectors of fine letterpress editions will frequently have a trade “reading” copy while fine letterpress editions in libraries are rarely read either. Today any letterpress book would be considered a “fine press” or “private press” work and it would indicate some special quality or veneration of the work. All other book production would be considered “trade” edition work.

Is this scenario relevant to a visualization of the interplay of electronic and print to paper book production? Some features of the past interplay of letterpress and off-set book production are interesting in that regard. But the alignments of comparison are surprising.

What was once common is now rare.

An exclusive, paper based reading mode for print content

A rare format can be associated with ritualistic or virtual reading.

Initially the readership for electronic format book works is small and rare. E-book enterprise would contend that future readership for paper based book works will be small and rare.

Transition occurs within a unique context

The transition from letterpress to off-set brought new profitability and efficiency to paper book production without disturbing reading habits or reading skill sets. The transition from paper to electronic book format may not bring new profitability and efficiency to book production and it disturbs reading habits and skill sets.

What remains rare is marginalized.

Letterpress books are now inconsequential in visualizations of the future of the book in spite of their astounding qualities and talented creators. If electronic format books remain rare in spite of their astounding qualities and talented creators they will also be marginalized in the future of the book. E-books are forever taking off. Their market appears to be genres now abandoned by paper books; travel reference, instructional manuals, textbooks and encyclopedias. These are genres that have never been associated with habits and skill sets of book reading.

A taxonomy of reading habits is a more significant factor in visualization of the future of the book than any demography of the market place.

We buy a lot of useless and worthless things, but we are extremely careful of time spent reading and extremely selective of content to read.

Why assume that the two visions of the furture of the paper book and future of electronic book readers are "competing" visions. It may be that their futures are mutually beneficial. It may as easily be that the two visions are completely unrelated. It was once assumed that television and PC's were competing.

Why is the paper book now in a "digital world"? It may be as easy to assume that the paper book and electronic book readers are in a larger world of allocated reading time. Why are functionalities of the paper book allocated to electronic reading devises considered indicators of the obsolescence of the paper book and not indicators of the obsolecence of the e-book?

Why is this all "leading to a sense that technology inevitably will supercede the printed book" instead of to a sense that technology continues to extend reading modes, superceding such sucession?

Why is it mentioned that younger readers are less reluctant to use digital reading devices without mentioning if younger readers are less skilled at reading print books?

p.5; "But under the law they aren't that different, and what's happening in the music industry may well be establishing and important part of the future of the book."

Well...only if that future departs from the print reading mode and from the paper medium. The assumption is more interesting than the projection. Conversely, if we see the future of the book in its traditional format we then realize that the paper book is a product of the "digital world" and is a digital product. The traditional book has prospered in the digital world for over a century already.

Come to think of it, metal type is "digital"; either type height as with a letter, or space height.

p.6-7; "It is essential to distinguuish between the idea of a digital book and a book-reading appliance".

This can also be rendered as between a (reading mode) and a "reading medium". That does the same thing and opens the discussion. Clifford's third essential term, "software book readers" should probably also be introduced up-front here to set the entire stage. I would re-render this third term as "an application to simulate the book medium or any other reading medium (such as newspapers or instructional manuals).

One reason to widen the "digital book" to reading mode is that the paragraph then goes on to discuss digital books as encompasing both paper print reading mode and the composite, on-line reading mode. An important insight follows on the key role of standards to formalize the sweep of reading modes as delivered from "books". Here is a key premise, that collections in specific reading media should be accessible to various other reading modes....essentially the FotB 4x4 premise.

p.9; "Another mental picture is one of continually adding books to a personal digital library housed on a portable device."

Library assembly is an attribute of paper books. Digital text goes in the opposite direction, dissolving the bibliographic entity - even down to the single word level. When automated reading and searching applications are more fully applied, no books will be left in the composite, on-line reading mode, let alone organized libraries.

It is also in publishers' interests to extinguish the longevity of digital formats, to limit proliferation of copies and to reinstall the base of reading devises.

p.10; "...imagine one's personal library being wiped out or corrupted because you've downloaded a virus-ridden book. Or, even more powerfully, an e-book full of crazy or maliciously false information that starts 'talking' to your other books."

This Bill Joy concern that artificial intelligence artificiates bionic intelligence is a big deal, and almost a done deal. One way to circumvent the scenario is to build the future of the transmission of knowledge on the paper book. (see also)

p.11 "Most importantly, current computer display technologies do not offer a pleasant environment for reading very long texts when compared to ink on paper."

I think the reason is more consequential than a lack of a "pleasant environment". The reason is an inability to deliver the needed physical features that enable reading comprehension.

p.12 "(in fact, one sees things translated from print that are truely abominable on screen, like multi-column formatting for journal articles.)"

(I think Clifford is showing some of his bais in this remark)

PDF formats are images of paper prints, not crippled screen presentations. Walt Crawford did a great synopsis of the attributes in FAQ of Cites & Insights. I suppose Clifford prefers the endless line lenght of browser renditions.

Here is Walt's explanation of the "abomination":

Why are issues PDF rather than plain HTML? * Even "normal" issues will be too long to read comfortably at the computer (for sane people with normal eyesight)--typically 12 to 16 pages, two columns each, with each column wide enough for a screen. * I'm not interested in learning enough HTML to produce the formatting I want, and Word 2000's output-as-HTML is so complex that I don't even want to think about it. I'm not a Webmaven (even though I make my living from Web-based services). * The two-column print format yields a reasonably compact print version; a screen-optimized HTML version would be much longer. (As far as I can tell, a reasonably-formatted HTML version of a typical 16-page issue would use at least 24 print pages.) * I do care about typography, and the PDF package retains the typography of the original.

There is another cheap shot on p.13; "Print-on-demand isn't cheap and it isn't particularly convenient - it's a lot like electronically ordering a printed book for physical delivery." (If it is a lot like that it is pretty successful. On-line book selling provided an important early model for e-commerce and Jason Epstein suggests that it should have provided that model even much earlier.)

p.14; "...there's little economic risk or cost in generating a PDF file as a part of the publication of almost every new book today."

This makes immense sense and converges well with the FotB EMU concept of excerpt mediated use increasing access to print. Of course this also leads to the discussion of the INTERACTION of source and surrogate which is the entire other Universe of FotB discussion. Neither Nicholson Baker vs. Preservation Librarians or CLIR Scholars vs. Preservation Librarians or, evidentally Clifford's essay on Print vs. e-Book, care to mention management of the interaction of original and copy. 90% of infrastructure is invisible.

p.15; "...providing scholarly legitimacy in an intensively conservative environment that still distrusts the validity of electronic works of scholarship."

(suggested revision;) for "intensively conservative environment" substitute; "intensely skilled reader base" and for "distrusts the validity" substitute; "perceives the invalidity".

"It allows authors to exploit the greater expressiveness and flexibility of the digital medium without alienating colleagues who haven't yet embraced this medium.

(name one....)

p.17; Paper books "still seem to be the medium of choice for longer texts intended for linear reading."

and (later) for

"...fiction as storytelling..."

(what else is there in the print reading mode? Anything left over should be discarded to e-book format)

p.24; "...music and video...are intrinsically electronic in form."

Music and video are in the first reading mode of orality/aurality where content effervesces on delivery. They are not exemplars of the future of the print book and their industries may not offer guidelines for paper book. Guidelines suggested for e-book publishing need to take into account that the on-line reading mode is a composite mode of the three parent modes. (This may not make any sense as all "industries" coverge toward a product in a composite mode. Maybe this exactly what Clifford is trying to tell people like me!)

p.28; "There is a lack of consensus about what behaviors and activities we want the new technologies of content management to enable or guard against."

We would like the e-book medium to be (1) easily readable, (2) compile into libraries and (3) reliably transmit knowledge. But it cannot, anymore than a transcription of the Gettysburg address can substitute for its initial delivery (however innocuous that may have been).

p.29; "...text does not have the same kind of recombinant, onmnipresent character (of) music..."

Yes, as for example a transcript vs. videotape of the Gettysburg address.

p.31; *"There's no reason why technical protection systems have to faciliitate even the making of clearly legal copies."

This indicates how far down the slope that technological artificiation of bionic intelligence has already gone. Copies were once made in the mind. Messages measured in seconds have had a life-long indelibility. Consider, for instance, distinctions between fair use and courtesy use in the influence of the Gettysburg address.

"Treating technology as if it were autonomous is the ultimate self-fullfilling prophesy. There is no difference between machine autononomy and the abdication of human responsibility." Jaron Lanier

"The e-book reader is fundamentally agnostic about the technological control of intellectual property."

(moreover the on-line reader has no coneption of the provenaunce of the source from which the screen presentation derives. The Gettysburg address just pops-up.)

p.32; "A final point about the first sale doctrine. While this has been valuable to consumers, it has been the lifeblood of libraries."

Libraries with a focus on the collection of the print mode should be OK. Such a restriction is not that bad, since the print mode can be delivered, via technologies to the other reading modes.

p.36; "Music is ephemeral."

Music is in another reading mode (orality/aurality), neither more nor less important than books. Film is in the same domain of reception as music, though with added technological support.

The differences of reading modes are important, as for example in control of content. In repressive countries it can be a federal offense to have an unauthorized mimeograph machine with the result that political dissention is conveyed in popular music.

p.36; "E-books, of course, form the nexus of the public policy debate about the future of textual content."

p.38; "...delay of delivering the physical goods..."

The delay of delivery of a book from Amazon is not quite that. Delay of a Google search beyond .34 seconds is consequential while delay of a book a few days is not. This is because reading the first screen of a Google search is commensorate with .34 seconds and reading of a paper book is commensorate with a few days. The reader of an ordered paper book is already reading a previous paper book and the delivery interval is imperceptable. In the same way the Google searcher has already completed the previous search and is (almost instantly) waiting for the next screen. (its the reading mode)

p.42; (Assessing E-book Readers) ">>>they are not easy to read on the screen."

Actually they are easy to read on the screen, but hard to comprehend. As an illustration think how easy it is to comprehend a notice in an absolutely blotted impression of 6 pt. type in a mid 19th century newspaper. Then think of how difficult it is to comprehend a full line of the same content strung across a website. Its not resolution, but reading mode. (see FotB commentary Reading by Hand)

And laptops, as contrasted with book readers, are no better (unless a book split screen is adopted). There is a reason that paper book pages of text are portrait format. This is not some quirk of design, but a very refined evolution of the line length and print array...the appearance of a page. The fact that this line length resolution is disregarded in landscape screen format is evidence enough that a print reading mode is not intended.

p.45; "Are we looking forward to the new digital genres, or backward towards digitized printed pages as we think about digital books? I believe the current appliance readers look backward - but this is not as limiting as it sounds."

It is as limiting as the attempt of appliance readers to mimic the print reading mode...but paper books are just as limited and "backward". An interesting question is presented by the next "genres" to which appliance readers are better suited. Are these the futuristic poetries of hypertext or plot multiplexing; new literary formats?

In the last few pages of the essay I have an accummulated a sense that Clifford is projecting that e-books may assume the role of print books but is building his argument on the reasons why they will not. I feel that Clifford wants to imagine that appliance book readers will do something else.

Just at this point of teetering, the Jason Epstein scenario with book print out to paper appliances moves into the discussion.

ca. p.46 (discussion of the two models; PDF/OEB)

Walt Crawford has noted the e-book hyperbole is inclusive of PoD paper output of books, casting the widest net of activity for electronic books. Clifford's inclusive approach in this regard is focused on the screen ready image intended for print to paper. John Warnock has supported this approach as well...that the exemplar of the paper book is exactly the right prototype product of the electronic book. Jason Epstein joins his perspective to this projection. Perhaps we should watch this trend...that the future of the book is exactly that. And, moreover, that the promise of the electronic book is realized with paper output.

Adobe FrameMaker: Save to PDF and go any where else, HTML/XML/SGML. John Warnock and Adrian Johns know something about the 17th century book print mode that prefigures the future of the "electronic" book. ...That conveying text to paper print is no less exciting, uncertain and forward looking than publishing on-line.

"Today it is widely assumed that digitized books and other texts will be read mainly on computer screens or on hand-held reading devices such as Palm Pilots or Gemstar readers. But a significant market for books read on screens has not yet emerged, and in my opinion this may never become the major mode of distribution for books on line. The more likely prospect, I believe, is that most digital files will be printed and bound on demand at point of sale by machines--now in prototype--which within minutes will inexpensively make single copies that are indistinguishable from books made in factories." Jason Epstein

p.47; "...-and a growing disconnect with the new digital genres, which are operating in a different conceptual framework."

Yes, a framework beyond the book. This is apparent with the charmed persistence of Eastgate's StorySpace and the Bolter and Lanham classics of more than a decade ago. There are now histories of the new literary genres such as Yellowlees Douglas, J., The End of Books - Or Books without End? Reading Interactive Narratives University of Michigan Press, 2000, isbn 0-472-11114-0.

p.48; "Consumers of all kinds....face a confusing array of choices and questions."

This essay suggests that the reader will play out both the role of willing consumer purchasing each new appliance and reading application, and, on the other hand, the role of the wise custodian of knowledge who will guide society. I imagine that in the USA, readers will participate in all the consumer trends, but that the same readers will responsibly advocate the continuing role of the print book as the custodial format for knowledge.

Are both roles consumerist? are both custodial? Yes. But the first is a participation in an economy and the other is participation in a culture. What Clifford is rightly pointing out is that the crucial risks are on the cultural side and that issues of cultural risk should not be defaulted to economic determination, particularly to the guidance of technological enterprise.

p.50; "Digital books and e-book reader appliances raise some serious issues for libraries."

Just a remark that these issues; observed, studied and reflected on, will result in publication of print books.

p.54; "Everything is being reduced to uniform streams of bits that..."

Not quite everything. Uniform streams of bits comprise only one sector of transmission and communication. As Clifford remarks; (nevertheless) "our expectations are not so straightforward or consistent."

p.54; "Print has historically been extremely long-lived because it has enjoyed a unique lack of technical mediation...."

This is a major point. What about the degree of technical mediation of reading modes? The suggestion that print is a mode of low technical mediation is a point of definition. What if books are so defined? "A book is a format conveyed with a low degree of technical mediation." Perhaps use of the bionic reader as the interface is an attribute...not a disattribute.

If so, it may follow, e-books with their need of support technology and mediation (particularly as they ascend to the composite on-line reading mode) are at a disadvantage.

From this perspective various future profiles of the interactivity of books and e-books emerge.

(1) e-books and all varieties of digital publication can serve as the medium for the working manuscripts for printed books. I'll bet thats what scholars are considering...using their web logging as processing platform for a print book; so synthesizing and resolving their thoughts that they can be conveyed bare, without any technological mediation...in the shape of a passive book of paper.

Think about it for a second. I remember the recent news item on the Jack Kerouac scroll manuscript of "On the Road". Imagine him in a loft, or for that matter wireless to his weblog, posting and pasting. Recall the great ambiguity and drama of an earlier historical period when a manuscript and its published format and reading mode were the same (book and writing mode) and therefore ambiguous and the work remained "unpublished" in our sense. Manuscripts are either lost or discovered throughout history. In the same way digital texts, weblogs and the whole genres of digital literature and data base information and space telemetry are either lost or found, but not published.

(2) The various presentational formats of the reading modes can be distinguished in terms of a degree of technological mediation required. Add to this matrix the use of technological mediation to deliver formats across thresholds from one reading mode to another. Then overlay mediations of the reader's preferred interface. The book vs. e-book is not an easily posed comparison in this diarama. In this situation every permutation deserves notice.

Say for example that the degree of technological mediation is inverse to a state of conclusion of the conceptual work conveyed. The more conclusive the less mediation. This thought again draws in the manuscript to publication transition. It is mentioned that there was a primeval time in which manuscripts in the single writing mode served both germanation and cannonic ends. Now manuscript genres are proliferated by degrees of technological mediation and publications are likewise proliferated. And most frequently thresholds of the reading modes are positioned between manuscript and publication.

But we can ask for all the benefits of technological mediation for the manuscript process and all the clarity of direct to reader mediation for works at a state of conclusion and refinement.

model of late Coptic book, cartonnage & free leaf of papyrus, ca. 8th century by Shanna Leino

(3) What is the threshold between the writing and reading mode..between manuscript and print? And how is it influenced by differing degrees of technological mediation? The writing mode is known for its 1:1 interface between writer and reader, frequently in an ongoing and reversing exchange. The print mode is known for its capacity for formal presentation of a conceptual work to a reading community, and, as importantly, for shared integrations of a given conceptual works among comparable others.

Prior to digital mediation, the written, manuscript was vulnerable to loss, but it was also susceptible to preservation. Once beyond the reach of the writer, it had no particular permutations of text, but it was very limited in its capacity for circulation. Digital technology has augmented the manuscript in every way. It is augmented in terms of mutability both by the author as well as in widely distributed representations as a manuscript. The writer and reader exchanges can also compile and these discussion threads can find further distribution and attention. At some point...following many phases of technological mediation, the manuscript could cross a threshold of publication to a strict print mode. More likely...to sustain the process of interactive technological mediation...the work will find the least threshold not to print, but to the composite, web based reading mode where even greater technological mediation is provided.

This scenario may suggest that the threshold between the writing mode and the on-line mode of publication is less that that between writing and print. Perhaps. It may also suggest that among facilities of technological mediation of encoded conceptual works is another facility of the mediation and dissolution of the thresholds that once existed between the parent reading modes.

If so, future visualizations, may look to seamless mediation of all reading modes regardless of the degrees of technological mediation associated with each phase from idea to published thesis and regardless of the parent mode of origin of the work. Then, just as conceivably, the degrees of technological mediation may be managed in detail and applied to enhance and not distract the efficiency of the transmission of knowledge. For example the thresholds could be accentuated while the productivity and efficacy of the separate reading modes are more intensively mediated by digital technologies. This is the scenario described by Jason Epstein which visualizes digital writing and digital distribution mediated by human editorial oversight and paper print at the point of the intermode threshold.

(4) Another possibility is that the "booke vs. ebook" competition is an illusion. These separate futures may have nothing to do with each other. In this scenario both will progress in a context of digital mediation but move toward very different realizations within that single context. This is an exciting possibility.

(5)Back to the degree of technological mediation. Lets assume that technological mediation, from a historical perspective, is intended to diminish drudgery and inefficiency. That would include both the drudgery and inefficiency of physical work as well as the drudgery and inefficiency of conceptual work.

Now there is an interesting thing to notice here. As technological mediation extends our inherent bionic capacities it also, progressively, exceeds them. But these progresses are not that robust. The process of extension of the capacities of technological mediation is secessionist and continuously subjected to obsolescence and displacement of the mediating forms and formats. Conversely, as we undertake activities with low degrees of technological mediation, we note an increasing robustness and stability based in human bionic capacities which have remained unchanged for thousands of years. This explains how anthropologists can literally rediscover flint knapping techniques and stone tool uses lost for tens of thousands of years. This must say something about the degree of technological mediation as applied to the transmission of knowledge.

The sliding scale between stable bionic capacity and unstable, though always increasing, technological capacity can be observed in the context of transmission of knowledge. But note how technological mediation in physical activity differs slightly from technological mediation in conceptual activity. The anthropologist is using an unadulterated dexterity however technologically mediated...so is an instrumental musician....so is a hand bookbinder. The researcher, on the other hand, is using a capacity for bionic thought that may already be artificiated, that is sustained, by technological mediation regardless of the amount of mediation applied to the given conceptual activity. A subtle difference that can be overlaid on the future of the book.

Ideally, we want robust, reliable performance for the transmission of knowledge. We also want high efficiency of comprehension from native bionic capacity. There is reason to exploit every current technological mediation that will realize such prerequisites. But if excessive technological mediation impairs both transmission reliability and native bionic comprehension there may be a problem.

It is a paradox that the paper book conveys conceptual thought via a physical object. But, that may be the same sort of paradox now needed to utilize the digital mediating technology of the ebook to transmit knowledge; it could be that the knowledge realized only via digital mediation is a knowledge of which we can take bionic possession. In the meantime we should not be disturbed to use the paper book for transmission of knowledge. We can also use it to retell our adventures with the ebook.

(to be continued)