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In occasion of the debate: «Des manuscrits antiques à l’ère digitale. Lectures et littératies» held in Lausanne, Frédéric Kaplan, researcher in artificial intelligence, presented a series of reflections around the future developments of the book’s form.

He starts defining the book as a “regulated representation”, a representation «governed by a set of production and usage rules»1. Regulated representations get more regular over time, implying the transformation of a convention -such as the book index- into a mechanism. After this stage, the representation becomes a machine. The book-machine has an architectural function, which is to organize a discourse in a closed space.

Kaplan then provides two different scenarios concering the future development of the book. These are defined by two opposite techonologies. The first one is the book’s original one, whose function is to isolate and structure a discourse within some determined borders. The second one belongs to the positivist Encyclopedia ideology, which is to encompass all the human knowledge, in an open and continuative process.

Currently the dominant model is the encyclopedic one: it shapes the internet and transforms every linear content into a database. It has some advantages such as new browsing and scanning possibilities. But it may eventually limits any structural innovation because innovations should be determined at a global level and this may cause a form of cultural immobility.

On the contrary, digital applications – such as iPad ones- still allow us to conceive the book as a closed form in the digital realm. The drawback is that there are some evident limitations regarding the specificity of the softwares or reading devices.

Even if it’s too early to make a choice between the two models, Kaplan suggests to experiment with book applications because they can be considered «laboratories for inventing new interfaces for complex discourses»2.

1-2. Frédéric Kaplan - “How books will become machines”, 2011.