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Comments on Text-e Position Papers

text-e: Virtual Symposium

Eco, Umberto, "Authors & Authority"

The current Umberto Eco inspired discussion at text-e seems circular to me. Whether the filters, or tools of selection or processes of peer review are in place yet on the web and whether they mirror or depart from such mechanisms long established...does not elucidate the fact that print and on-line reading are different acts.

On-line reading is a different mode. It is a technology enabled composite of its parent modes. The parent modes are an oral/verbal mode, a mode of writing and the print mode. Because Each of the, now four, reading modes engenders different meaning from the same content. This phenomenon can be termed thresholding where change of format changes meaning. A simple illustration of thresholding is provided by the act of reading name tags at a conference.

The web is loaded with acts of thresholding; shifting content into different contexts. Even the on-line image of a facsimile of a print page, is situated in a different context and has a different meaning. The composite on-line reading mode situates the mediation or interface, not with the reader alone, but through real filters of automation and software.

Sperber, Dan, "Reading without Writing"

Dan projects that technologies will convey voice to text and text to voice. Well and good. But he then goes on to say that such interface will supplant writing.

Methods of composition are different from methods of depicting composition. An instructor noticed that new students were unable to hand write cursive script. They had gone from alphabet letters to keyboard. But they were able to write or compose text. These student could also discard the keyboard and still “write” or compose via another interface. What cannot be discarded is the process of composition prior to delivery. Reading your own writing is a particular stage of writing. In the same way looking at or listening to your own composition of text is a stage of writing.

A recipient reader’s view is different. The text image or text audio pop-ups prior to any composition. The reader must be informed of the status; perhaps recomposition is intended or desired so that the delivered text is still in a manuscript status. As such it is in a writing reading mode, not a print reading mode.

It is unlikely that a reading mode, particularly one that serves as a compositional stage would disappear. More likely, technology enabled interactions between verbal, written, print and composite, on-line modes will multiply, not diminish.

Rich Gold, XFR/PARC, Future of Reading: "Better reading is based on better writing. And the writing goes all the way down through the media. Great reading is based on huge time compressions between the act of writing and the act of reading. It might take eighteen months to write something great which will be read in twenty minutes, as it is in this case."

Chartier, Roger, “Readers and Reading in the Age of Electronic Texts”, Bibliotheque publicque d’information, 2001

Roger Chartier has offered the perspective that the transition to electronic texts will be as consequential as the transition from scroll to codex. This perspective attributes much greater historical consequence to the scroll to codex transition than that of the transition from manuscript to print, and this perspective is continued in this position paper.

This positioning that correlates the scroll to codex transition, rather than the Gutenberg revolution, is very suggestive and full of avenues of discovery. Roger offers many, from quirks of the different formats to whole premises. A fun quirk that he offers is that the scroll does not permit “writing while reading”. A sweeping premise begins with the obvious observation that electronic, screen read text is presented in scroll format. This factor leads to considerations of return to the circumstances of reading in late antiquity.

FotB perspectives quickly follow these avenues of discovery set out by Chartier. On the quirk end of observations is the “cartennage and free leaf” structure of the early papyrus codex. Is it meaningful that the first prototype of the modern book was completely constructed of a single substrate, both enclosure and text reveal, much like the structure of the scroll? The codex substrate is handled in two ways; pasted into laminated cartennage to produce covers and sewn into free leaf arrays to present text. Further the papyrus catennage was buried text or sheets of discarded text. These quirks may be clues to the ever increasing layers of meaning in transmission formats.

The cartennage & free leaf attribute is also associated with the interaction of papyrus letter writing and folding and the possibility of sewing folded letters to facilitate their transport. We know that the adoption of the codex format had to be associated with a prevalent and ordinary communication mode among the sectarians and papyrus letter writing and tranmission via Mediterranean navigation certainly answers that characteristic. Was the adoption of the codex then signaling a transition from a writing reading mode to a print reading mode yet to come?

At the far end of basic premise Chartier suggests that the paradox of conceptual works transmitted by physical objects may have more than a conceptual circumvention. FotB perspective converge here with the important threshold, encountered across the line from parent reading modes to the composite, on-line mode, where the reader, alone is no longer the interface to the presented meaning.

Let’s look at some other particularly suggestive apects of the Roger Chartier perspective. (In the Adobe E-book format pagination).

p. 9“The disappearance of the criteria which once allowed one to distinguish, classify and order discourse has bred much anxiety.”

Here Charier is commenting on the melt-down of distinctive print formats into the uniform format of screen presentation. All well and good. The significance of this melt-down is also explained by the on-line reading mode acting as a technologically sustained, composite of the other parent reading modes.

p.11 “Another element could, in the long term, turn the world of digital technology on its head.”

Here Roger is adding a note on electronic ink. As regards the future of the book, this path, like the path to the non audible e-book, leads not to a significant book equivalent, but to another planet of applications. Street signage comes to mind. Print-on demand, or the technological easing of the threshold between writing and print reading modes is the main track for consideration. PoD and a low overhead retailing and product positing mechanism such as the Snack vending machine. Roger should also be wary of electronic ink as regards book equivalent from another perspective, it deconstructs the traditional library of inter positioned physical books.

p.12 ”Moreover, the electronic revolution, which at first seems so universal, can also deepen, rather than reduce inequities.”

Here Roger is discussing a “have/have not” aspect of literacy. Here again it is important to consider that the have/have not threshold is coincidentally crossed exactly at the point, from the transition of parent reading modes, where the reader alone is the interface, to the situation of a composite, on-line mode where software or the program is the interface. This is where meaning is the real “found” object, the pop-up of an electronic search.

p.13 ”What is original, and perhaps worrying about our period is that the different revolutions in written culture which, in the past had been disjointed, are now happening simultaneously.”

FotB interpretation is a bit different here. What we have conceded is that technological support, enabling a synthesis of the parent reading modes, is suddenly OK.

p.17”To plead for the use of new technology in the publication of knowledge is therefore to warn against the laziness bred by electronic technology and to encourage a more rigorous control over cultural and individual exchanges.”

Here the advent of the new age of a universal library really hits the fan. The phantom of an artificial intelligence only leads to the artificiation of bionic intelligence. We are doing this to ourselves.

p.19 ”But disappointment has always accompanied this expectation of universality since all collections, however rich, can only ever result in a partial, flawed version of the exhaustiveness required to fulfill this wish.”

Yet, even the smallest print book library has an absolute or perfect arrangement of books with each other. Is this a clue to the reason for the paradox of conceptual works conveyed by physical objects?

p.21”More than ever, perhaps, one of the essential tasks of libraries is to collect, protect, catalog and make assessable the written objects of the past. If the works that they have transmitted cease to be communicated, or even preserved in anything other than electronic form, the risk is great that the past’s textual cultures, embodied as they are within objects - the books - which have transmitted them, will no longer be intelligible to us.”

AMEN

Casati, Roberto, “What the Web Tells Us about the Real Nature of the Book”, Bibliotheque publique d’information, 2001.

The Web as exemplar of a composite reading mode suggests plenty about the book. In particular the Web can convey the print mode of the book into various interactivites with the verbal and writing mode. Perhaps, more significantly, the Web enables the print book to be conveyed discretely to either the verbal or the written mode (i.e., digital audio book or pre-posted e-book) or to join in specific merges between the three parent modes (i.e., position papers of the text-e virtual symposium or an archive of the Compuserve exchange corpus, or methodic weblogging). Roberto discusses just such tracking, although without the matrix of the reading modes. By using a polarity of two column examples he comes close to presenting the exciting interactivity, but leaves much of that excitement to the reader alone. The subject of the paper, “the metaphysics of the book” is exciting and the possibility that new, technology supported interminglings and hybrids of the parent reading modes, can, like the chemistry of asteroids, can teach us something about our familiar surroundings.

p.8 on discussion of the “book commodity” and exchange of cultural contents the Casati dimension remains monetary. Books are either paid for or not. This single layer economy is not dimensional enough to discuss the worth of books. The economy of education, knowledge and research exchange, the whole economy of conceptual competition and value, is based on exchanges of a different kind. It is useful to consider intellectual “property” in terms of wrongful use, in terms of wrongful profit....but such usurpation is just the thing for conceptual profit. On another level of the economy of exchange of concepts, pirates are the promoters of discoveries.

In this same economy of the exchange of concepts the denominations are best expressed in the currencies of the various reading modes. Casati discusses the evaluation of Web hits as it relates to the desire to find solid measures of value of content delivered in a composite on-line reading mode. This is a very shaky approach as based on automated return tallies of referers. Almost all of Web traffic resulting in inter-site hits is misdirected. That is the visitor has misconstrued the meaning of the search prompt in terms of the pop-up site. Such surprised traffic accounts for a majority of my (FotB) hits. As I mine referers I must discount most. The prevalent classics are “hand reading” where FotB regards the haptic qualities of the print mode, not palm reading, “exposed thong” where FotB considers laced case vellum bookbinding, not scanty underwear, or “Ethiopian model” where FotB considers bookbindings not ladies. Of course, the greater majority of misdirected traffic constitute the nearer misses on search prompts.

p.20 ”Google is not an expert - in fact it is ignorant and acts blindly. But it comes close to the perfect librarian....

Actually Google is becoming an expert and the experts managing it know this. Google is in fact artificiating bionic intelligence which is a very smart approach to the delivery of a reading mode so, complex, composite and kaleidoscopic that it is too profound for the surfing reader.

”But why prefer link-votes to experts? .....Would it be better to trust (such) an expert? No. ....In five years all new knowledge will pass through the Web. And if they are of no use on the Web, where else do we need experts?”

Amen. The Web has a life of its own in a different way that a book has a life of its own. With the book an author’s understanding speaks directly to the reader across cultures and centuries. The web is without readers and without time. This is why it is important to pose discussion of the metaphysic of the book in the context of its own print reading mode and then project its relevance outward as it interfaces and interacts with the composite on-line mode.

p. 24 ”It is sometimes thought that the difficulty of selling electronic content is due to the lack of appropriate gadgets on which to read it, but this does not seem quite accurate.”

Amen. You can read an e-book (print) display across the room. The only problem is that you cannot comprehend it. This has to do with the haptic efficacies of the print reading mode discussed elsewhere at this site. A good example: the blotted, 9-point type classified entries in an early 19th century American newspaper, perhaps regarding a run away slave, is easier to comprehend than the enlarged, enhanced text on-line.

p.25 the inexplicable dilemma of the eBook is easily resolved from the vantage of the reading modes. “To try to tie electronic content down to the book metaphor means not to take advantage of the various possibilities to opens up.” Even more so, the fully mutable presentation of electronic text enables discrete delivery to various reading modes or specific combinations. In the case of the ebook the appropriate direction is to the aural/verbal mode as exemplified by the digital audio book....rather than the to the crippled electronic equivalent of print.

p.26 The book publishing-on-demand opportunities opened by electronic distribution will not migrate to screen format, but to print format. This and low overhead retailing devices such as the vending machine, are one best bet for the future of the book.

p.27 ”...free content (does) not have competitors.”

Many of the interactivities of life are free. Book publishing...as regards the opportunity and right to document your concepts and interplay them among those of others is now one of these. This circumstance will only invigorate libraries. Libraries could care less that individual authors, individual agencies, nations or institutions have a pre-emptive interest in the merchandising of their content. Libraries do not sell the service of access to an isolated (owned) book. Libraries arrange, organize and preserve books into a larger infrastructure of content and knowledge and provide the service of access to THAT infrastructure. It is one of the many attributes of the print book that it can be arranged into collections.

Epstein, Jason, “Reading: The Digital Future”, New York Review of Books, 2001.

Scenarios for the production, distribution and retailing of books in a context of a digital reading mode are well and good. Scenarios in other contexts, such as that of the print reading mode, need to stay on task taking the smaller steps that lead to leaps of projection rather than visa versa.

Jason Epstein’s measured scenario for print-on-demand in the context of a print mode wonderfully engages all the attributes of digital production, distribution and retailing without crossing the threshold to on-line reading; all well and good. FotB has only one minor suggestion, that could, however, lead to a leap.

The suggestion is to decouple the ultra-book-on-demand machine back into its more traditional components. Specifically, the suggestion is to engage a separate retail infrastructure based on conventional snack vending technology and maintain certain thresholds between this infrastructure and that of the print-on-demand technologies and publishing infrastructure. As Epstein says; “The marketplace for digital book printed on demand requires that thousands of machines be maintained at remote locations.”

Some advantages of this seeming reversion to the proven past of the stand alone vending machine are its amazing adaptability to any spectrum of book and book-like products. This is an adaptability to the PoD product as well as the CPD (conventional print distribution) product. While the vending machine offers an off the shelf solution to on-site installation, improving even on Epstein’s requirements of an outlet and a supply of paper, it also opens opportunities for machine customization based on the proven bill negotiating and screw/gravity vend technologies.

More advantages; the vending machine decoupled from the printing machine opens opportunity for book-like products. Here a kaleidoscope of possibilities including book craft kit products, local literary and regional author arrays and library and educational class work promotions emerge.

But what are some larger implications of the decoupling, rather than the necklacing of the technologies of print book production in the PoD sector? Three immediately spring up; (1) the focus must be downstream with the reader, (2) the print book seeks injection into contexts of community life and (3)the print book transcends its own technologies to create a live interaction of exchange of ideas. Are these topics large enough? If they are how can the lowly vending machine realize them?

Regarding (1) we have already mentioned the scheme of the three parent Ong reading modes and their recent accentuation as a technologically enabled synthesis (the 4th composite reading mode). Let’s skip review of that narrative for now...its familiar to FotB readers. The important issue is to remember that the 4th mode is a synthesis or combination of the others and that each parent mode can be discretely delivered to each other or to any other composite combination. Its more than 4 squared reading modes because the source to delivery configurations have to be factored in as well.

Let’s go to (2) contexts of community life. In the USA any productive activity considered “labor intensive” is considered inefficient. Other cultures look a little deeper into the ingredients needed for vital community life. The vending machine imposes transactional thresholds in distribution, stocking and sales evaluation that are labor intensive...but this is good. Remember that in the special reality of the world of the book everything is labor intensive. Writing a book is labor intensive. The vending machine couples as well as decouples the technological transformation of the print reading mode products. These various transactions are part of the efficacy of the print book. Books in bars, books in hair salons, books in bus stations.

(3) The codex is the companion of consciousness. It is no accident that it takes a physical form to convey conceptual works. This is not a paradox, but a manifestation of the function of books to convey ideas out of bionic origins into material existences. Adrian Johns has illustrated how the book repeatedly transcends its own technologies to produce these cyberspaces of special consciousness and particular interactions between book authors and book readers. Vending machines and their modest technologies are also transcended by the instant gratification of an exchange for money, a bit of gravity and the possession of different narrates, concepts and momentary conciousnesses. The vending machine fulfills the paradox of the physical object that conveys concepts.

(to be continued)