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Be There and Be Square

steampunk

be square

Its a bit refreshing to discover weird enclaves that consider connectivity uncool and screen reading crappy. They love in stead old weedy, wily, homemade print. For them it is Be There and Be Square; be square as in out-of-step with the digital age and square with the paper too. Same for us.

Remember, all the digital advocates are old now.

March 27, 2008, rote connectivity

"Somebody, in the name of contrariness if nothing else, should be making the argument against reading." Dan Visel, if:book blog

Dan's wide-ranging exposition of the ideology of reading may mask an ideological agenda of connectivity. Classical education was based on rote memorization. Print delivered a new premise of rote reading. Distancing learning from these presumptions is fine, but not if we exchange them for a presumption of education based on rote connectivity.

Memorization and reading had, at least, the virtue of engaging the student's own mind. The choices for thoughtful escape were there because all the processing was going on in the person. The counter part of GPS is TPS (thought positioning system) in which search and discovery and evaluation occur outside the student in online educational resources.

nail in the tub

"The announcement this morning of the launch in the UK of a new waterproof laptop looks like another nail in the coffin of the traditional paper book, as the new device at last makes it possible to read a downloaded electronic fiction while relaxing in a hot bath." if:book

It is silly enough to define the network book as a paper book mime. But to define the network book as bathtub and beach ready is doubly lost. But suggestive. Who would prefer a bath or beach online? And does time at the screen subtract from existence?

For a decade hand held reading devices have been introduced to simulate paper books. These e-book readers are continuously taking off, but have not yet found their market. Perhaps the drag on their acceptance is the obvious one. Perhaps the e-book is frustrated precisely because it attempts to simulate the paper book.

The model for the electronic reader and networked book is elsewhere as the cell phone and distinctive formats of on-line discussion have long demonstrated. It appears that connectivity will always supersede content in screen delivery. And doubly wrong is the premise that the e-book reading is linked with paper book reading and that growth of one will be at the expense of the other.

Certainly the physical book is in a new and lively competition for market and reader attention but the real spoiler for the future of the paper book is not book mimicry on a screen. The much more serious threat is faulty "on-demand" production of the book itself. Poor quality subtracts directly from efficiencies that have long enabled the success of the physical book.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

reading between the lines

The Kindle froze. No way to navigate, no way to force quit, just screen froze on a page. Many such Kindle experiences provide a tutorial in the performance attributes of paper books. For example, the kindle needs prompts for each page while the paper book presents a two page spread.

The freeze episode suggested that many prompts of books are not related directly to reading. With a paper book or among various paper books or in the stacks of a library the ease of such non-reading prompts makes them invisible. The very act of consulting two books side by side is quite natural with physical books. Even the more complex acts of perceiving an unpublished, potential book between books on the shelf or conceiving a realization between the lines are experiences smoothly sustained by physical books. And you can close a real book.

Tuesday, April 29

haptic efficiency

"The online reader expends a great deal of mental energy just navigating. Paper’s tangibility allows the hands and fingers to take over much of the navigational burden, freeing up the brain to think."

William Powers' essay comes close to describing the haptic efficiencies of paper. But notice his list of disadvantages of paper that are actually attributes. The evaluation of paper should not be positioned as an absence of screen attributes.

"In a digital world, paper actually has quite a few limitations: (1) It takes up physical space; (2) It can only be in one place at a time (virtual media can be accessed from anywhere); (3) It is difficult to alter or edit; (4) It does not play moving images or sound; and (5) It cannot network or connect to other media. The mystery is why a medium with so many disadvantages is still all around us."

The physical space actually enables rearrangement in library organizations, the linear circulation is a premise of slower paced evaluation, the persistence enables scholarly interpretation, the lack of high density, visual content enables economy and durability, and the lack of connectivity is augmented by bibliographic utilities such as the web.

The disadvantage of paper most frequently mentioned is its lack of connectivity and auto-searching. Digital content is self-indexing. The encoding that enables screen presentation also enables searching. But this disadvantage of paper hides an advantage. Because paper cannot self index, it self-authenticates. Which attribute figures in the transmission of culture?

May 2nd

machine AND eye readable

It is an immense attribute that physical books are so receptive to any sort of scanning, both imaging and reading. The current fad for imaging is only another enthusiasm of their use. Some presumptions do emerge, but the centuries old book will be witness centuries into the future. Imagine the presumption of the scanners who see their mission as "digitizing to preserve indefinitely". (more)

Digital preservation of analog content has a number of presumptions. These include (1) that digital preservation is less costly, (2) that it requires less skill, (3) that analog collections will not outlast their digital simulations, and (4) that analog collections will not need rescanning.

legibility and the immediacy of meaning

"The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?

The globalization paradigm leads people to see economic development as a form of foreign policy, as a grand competition between nations and civilizations. These abstractions, called “the Chinese” or “the Indians,” are doing this or that. But the cognitive age paradigm emphasizes psychology, culture and pedagogy — the specific processes that foster learning. It emphasizes that different societies are being stressed in similar ways by increased demands on human capital. If you understand that you are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, you’re focusing on the real source of prosperity and understand that your anxiety is not being caused by a foreigner." David Brooks, "The Cognitive Age", NYT, May 2.

next wave

The University of Iowa Libraries initiative to confirm the continuing role of tangible collections in the context of digital library services....is here. This collection development agenda has moved beyond the five year stealth collection of leaf masters into an official repository. And beyond that, in the long term, this mastering and back-up collection, curated by the Preservation department, will validate the transmission function of tangible collections.

vineyard of the text

"If we realize that the rise of the author and the transparency of print was almost accidental, at best contingent, and never, even in its own time, the only way to understand production of discourse, we can more usefully and productively create alternatives in our own time." Lisa Maruca

The Work of Print: Authorship and the English Text Trades, 1600-1760, by Lisa Maruca, is a fabulous reading adventure. This evaluation of the historical "naturalization" of print also expertly defines the ambiguities of conveying conceptual works with physical objects.

Transitions and summersaults from the 17th to 18th and into the 21st centuries suggest that the producers of print rarely accepted equitable recognition of their different contributions. Producers of intellectual "property" and producers of delivered products of print both contend for privileged treatment. In our own contemporary context the competition continues. In spite of bias for supremacy of authors as literary producers, those creator's rights are now contradicted by "cloud" authorships, and the recognition of creativity of blog and web workers. And a dawning sense of the mortality and mutability of electronic works repositions them from eternal to physiological future life.

But what about tangibility? Here, as Maruca points out, a fawning regard for the physical possession of the computer is apparent, regardless of implications of its connectivity or content. Maruca argues that we need a grip on the tangible components of mortal work and physical product because, as print history confirms, any technology of communication quickly disappears and is sublimed as a cultural agenda.

ten popular fallacies of screen reading advocates

1. There is an analog/digital divide in the technologies of information transmission. (If there is any divide it is between paper and screen based reading.) 2. There is something distinctive about being "born digital". (All information is born digital. How it grows up provides the distinction.) 3. We are experiencing a one-way transition from paper to screen. (Its actually a two-way, not a one-way transition.) 4. Screen based books can be equivalent to print books. (This assumption overlooks legibility, haptic efficiencies, default persistence and self-authentication attributes of print transmission that are not provided in screen reading.) 5. The only history is the future. (Every revolutionary functionality of the book awaits rediscovery out of the past.) 6. The print book is at best an accessory of screen reading. (Screen reading and digital connectivity is an accessory, or bibliographic utility, of the print book.) 7. We can dismiss the functionality of the physical book because the attributes of screen reading are overwhelming. (Dismiss the attributes of the physical book and you also dismiss the functionality of sustained reading. The constraints of the physical book are instructional efficiencies that the nurture of reading skills of all kinds.) 8. Screen based delivery of text is self-indexing and searchable. (Print, unlike screen text, is self-authenticating. Print text is immutable, content encompassed and a reliable witness, all opposite of screen characteristics. Touch screen voting, census automation and many other automated tabulations from traffic control to genetic modification confirm the importance of authentication.) 9. Change is speeding up, leaving the print book behind. (The digital technologies will also engender a Renaissance of print. Paradigm change occurred in the 19th century with the advents of instant telecommunication, electrical power, digital encoding, keyboard interface and photo imaging. Since then change has been slowing down) 10. Print reading will die off with aging readers. (Youthful readers are perennially attracted to audio and visual reading while mature readers perennially assimilate sustained print reading.)