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Futurist Visions session, SHARP, 2001

Report on SHARP session, “Futurist Visions of the Book” Chesapeake C, University Center, at the three century old College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, 8:00-10:00 am, Friday, July 20th, 2001

On this date and in this place, yours truly from the FotB News desk, moderated a session of four fine presentations on the future of the book. The premise from the start was that futurology is an authentic path of book study; that the history of the book is inherently futuristic and that the study of the book necessarily flings us forward past the present. The book is peculiar in this regard due to its role in the trajectory of ideas. Just as the date of the end of the world must always be migrated forward into the future, likewise the future of the book always needs to be migrated backward toward the initial mechanism of the projections.

We began the session with “The Last Book: How the Digital Paper Changes Man’s Communication”, which was presented by Stephan Fussel, Director of the Gutenberg Institute for the History of the Book and New Media at the University of Mainz, Germany. This was an excellent beginning since Stephan summarized the past, including Gutenberg’s role. Then he described an ominous circumstance of the book trade in 2001 and went on to describe the ominous advent of a synthetic page sheet with an embedded field of electronic ink. He dismissed ebooks as an “intermediate solution to the future of the book” as he considers these reading devices to be without “haptic” attribute as compared with the paper book.

The body of the presentation concerned electronic ink. Joe Jacobson of MIT received the Gutenberg-Prize 2000 from the International Gutenberg-Society in commemoration of this invention. Microscopic transparent spheres containing mobile white particles suspended in in ink provide the transformer dot. Already the sphere layered sheets provide changeable billboards for commercial display. Another proposed application will be a book equivalent, styled “the last book”. The book schematic includes the downloading ports. More believable was a single folio sheet newspaper console.

It was rather disconcerting to hear a custodian of the legacy of Gutenberg so enthused with another “solution to the future of the book”. For me, the very slickness of Dr. Fussel’s electronic presentation indicated an irrelevance to probable outcomes for the paper book. This was a story of the book of the future rather than a balanced view of the future of the book. Stephan provided a color printout equivalent of the presentation on magnificent sheets all with the luster of polypropylene which were distributed in a “dokumentenecht” vinyl rain pouch.

The next presentation was given by Suzanne Ebel from Napier University in Edinburgh. This presentation was titled “The Shape of Books to Come” and it considered the transitions of delivery modes for fiction. Specifically Suzanne considered the similarity between episodic web publication and the exemplar of the 19th century serialized subscription novel.

This paper brought out the match and mismatch aspects of the two different episodic delivery systems in different contexts of book commerce and presentation format. The 19th century readership engaged a fixed staircase of a narrative that would entail some pausing at each step, but which would eventually produce a conventional paper copy reading. The 19th century subscriber paid up front and only risked loss of an alternative reading rate. The reader of episodic fiction which is delivered on-line risks both less and more. The installments are separate transactions, but the options of the assembly of the whole content are in question both at the reader’s interface and even at the author’s point of writing.

In my estimation, the comparison was really reaching. While many “paradigm shifts” claimed by our own time are actually inherited from the 19th century.(including instantaneous information transmission, digital encoding. and technologically sustained composite reading modes) the serial paper novel and the episodic hypernovel do not seem to me to be a pair.

A quality that this paper did project for the session is how futuristic the past is for the discipline of book studies. When suspected continuities are not confirmed the precursor may be more modern. The episodic hypernovel may aspire to satisfy the reading metabolism of a19th century serial, but it produces an experience and a product that is out of body and less marketable.

The third presentation was by Martha Carothers of the University of Delaware. I liked this presentation because it followed literary reference to contemporary implication. Martha provided a commentary on excerpts from “The Design of Books” by Beatric Warde which was published in the Crystal Goblet, 1956. This canny essay depicts the tendencies toward a commonly assessable book of the future. These projections preconfigure the present on-line reading mode.

This was an engaging presentation both in mode and meaning. The title was “The Common Man’s book of the Future” which Warde imagined as a “succession of pictures, comic-strip style, with ‘balloons’ and captions in capital letters only” Going in that direction, Martha provided a whole slide show of public signages that exhibited the diverse utilizations of upper and lower case lettering while these were interspersed with all cap excerpts from the Warde essay; a fascinating double projection of both textual and pictorial narration with appropriate silent reading interludes provided between live comments.

The last of the four presentations; “The Laser Printer as an Agent of Change” by Barbara Brannon was especially excellent. It conjured excitement from start to finish to contend that a newer printing technology has suddenly reversed the legacy and effect of imprinting ideas.

Barbara considered “the effect of computers as the mode of printing, that is, the laser printer as an agent of change.” She continued; “Though the laser printer cannot be solely credited with launching the information age, it was the single invention that transformed several emerging technologies into a new way of thinking about printing, publishing, books, and, ultimately, how people interact with written language.”

Barbara then stated her immense and subtle premise;”It is the fluid, unfixed nature of the assembly of tiny dots forming the shape of laser-printed letters that endows this invention with such transformative power.” This “unfixing of typography” sends the transmission of ideas, both text and illustration, into a state of mutability and momentary appearance. The various print-outs only confirm the proliferation of implications of a star field of dots. At the same time, the momentary transition between latency and print fuser fixing confirmed each writer as a publisher, each manuscript as print and each copy as an original.

The two hour session on futurist visions of the book was positioned at the start of the conference and was well attended. The audience engaged in very close listening and produced questions equal to the ardor of the presenters. I hope this sub-topic continues to pop-up in future SHARP conferences, meaning that I hope that scholars of authorship, reading and printing continue to explain the weird modernity of the history of the book.

The 9th annual SHARP conference began in Richmond and then moved to Williamsburg. At one reception, following drinks and official welcomes, the last speaker to step forward was Thomas Jefferson. The sun was blazing on the western portico of the Wren building. He moved between the crowd to the top step. On his right was Richard Minsky looking exactly like George Washington. Richard waited for Jefferson to speak first. Turns out that Jefferson knew more about Virginia than Richard. But Richard knew more about books one hundred and fifty years later.

Richard, decked out in plum on one day and powder blue on another looked like Washington throughout the conference. Moreover he had a wise contribution for each session in which he participated. He was a very attentive listener and offered acute commentary on topic. For example he responded to the a presentation examining upper and lower cases of informal public signage, explaining how invented ephemera, once published, fictionalizes the real world which no longer accords with the illusion of reality that the reader now has confirmed through invented evidence. He actually explained this...but I cannot remember how it went. Later he mentioned that exhibition, which must include graffiti, now constitutes an authentic publication mode with the unique handmade distributed to thousands of viewers rather than the imprint of thousands of copies distributed to individual readers. This is indigenous SHARP territory and Richard fit perfectly

SHARP members also know the role of books. They know that the paradox of transmitting conceptual works via physical objects makes sense and that the paper book is post digital already. But, this proven infrastructure is not secure when it comes to money. The “natural number” of the publishing industry’s 3-4% profitability is well established according to Andre Schiffrin. For a conglomerate to require 15% will only succeed in destroying publishing and its ability to produce a scope and quality of books. According to Andre the excess profit orientation produces two unintended consequences; the disappearance of an assured profit and the destruction of the industry that assured that profit.

Nicholson Baker pointed out that another obvious assumption is also at risk. This is the assumption that preservation management will result in preservation. SHARP members, totally dependent on the surviving documentary and artifactual corpus of past activities of publication, listened closely. Nick said his critics term his fact collecting as a search for conspiracy. Nick did not use the word in his DoubleFold book and calls their mind set the conspiratorial element. The modest appeal that he presented was not the preservation of everything, but only the preservation of one five hundredth thousandth of the editions. But, no, somehow preservation management must see this last infinitesimal purged, evidentially to rid us from primitive, technologically unmediated contact with the past. Just where is the kinky conspiracy here?

The SHARP audience had to be the quickest and most supportive audience to which Nick has ever delivered his message of newspaper preservation. Geez...this was a good meeting and I can see how SHARP continues to grow at an explosive rate.