User:Laurier Rochon/notes/theunboundbook notes

THE UNBOUND BOOK - MAY 20th 2011

before reading the book > reading/literacy as a craft
the e-book is more than just a representation of text in a new medium
the battle of books, the battle of the book business
last comments are from : JOOST KIRCZ

SESSION 1 : what is a book?

author -> text -> book -> reader -> receiver
public readings > no text or book. the reader takes on the author's voice
film : Farenheit 451

Arianne B.

e-book publishing - how do you compete with a publisher like Apple?
e-books are more ecologicaly friendly (Google uses lots of energy) (this is cutting corners...)
having research about tech takes time. making laws takes time.
"the digital revolution is not headed towards where we were told it was heading" (where is this? isn't this what we want?)
"no one is interested in hearing the effects of this revolution"
"digital immigrants are more proficient in performing a search than their kids, the digital natives" (???)
Nicholas Carr : pulling quotes way out of context? (The Atlantic)
Which proprety of physical books should be kept in thinking of digital books?
"Multimedia should dissapear from / The editing of books should not be allowed"
"Paper is durable, cheap, etc."
Irreplacable properties : books are extensions of our memory. Apparently this is not feasible by digital books.
"Smell, taste, form, etc."

Alan Liu : This is not a book

"The end of the end of the book" Essay
Collex / Open Journal Systems / PReE
books are not books - they always need to be compared?
books and e-books - 'long, permanent form of attention, permanent standard, authoritative'
mbooks - media books - created and understood as media, not as a book
"Books and scrolls : navigating the bible" Essay
The bible was very hypertextual, irregular, non-linear and interactive (for any service, need bookmarks to move to different places)
"When was linearity?" Essay
digital book = metaphor for physical book - physical book is a metaphor for a book
"Strange rain" iPad app
what's important : not the future of books, but the future of long form attentions
to do so, new methodological methods - some kind of telescope to look into the past & future
"network archeology" / "media archeology"
SNAC (social networks and archival contexts)
RoSE - A research-oriented social environment
"Agrippa" William Gibson (1992)
The book is not a book (physical, e-book, m-book, etc.), it's the long form of attention. This is usually collective and plays over time.
authority is moving into 'context' - if the context is clear, then things can be understood in relation to that context.

Miha Kovac, University of Ljubljana - What is a book?

moving from a socialist structure for his publishing house into a market oriented structure
a book is a technology - organize and store complex textual/visual info
main historical embodiments : scroll, codex and digital file
printed books - the physicality affects the size of the book : too thin and too thick are not printed
printed texts are easier to preserve (???) - he is talking about the form, not the content...

- 'the cloud' - data centers are more secure, decentralized and numerous (soon) than libraries and bookstores - in a fingersnap, I can duplicate a book 10, 100, 1M times.

having your physical book is part of your identity, it has a physical presence
the storing of book content changes the way we think...pbook vs ebook
linear reading / books professions / fixity and preservability

SESSION II : the unbounding of the book

Florian Cramer

unbound vs boundless
aaaaarg.org vs kindle
e-books are very linear - developing apps for books is very hard to keep up to date technically
the book has become much more stable because of the web, through the web - ex : the phonebook
print books are slowly becoming objects of decoration - because of their physical attributes, not the content
big disconnect between the embodiment and the content. e-books are becoming the cheap paperbacks from before

Gary Hall - coventry university

Liquid, living books
A writer writes texts, not books
what are the options for the authors vs publishers
'perhaps we need to unbind modernity' and think differently

Bernhard Rieder - University van Amsterdam

The book as data object
what kind or arrangement for discovering and reading?
what is the 'computational potential' of millions of books?
exploring full-text metadata / connecting by means of data / capturing and inferring from user practices
books become information (in 451 people become books - so people become information?)
the algorithms are very predictable
these databases have institutional effects
translation : having large statistical pools of data VS decyphering the underlying structure (meaning - i.e. Chomsky)
www.thepoliticsofsystems.net
books : random-access media - user-driven media (the users are in control of the media)
a book as a place
socialbook - all in the browser - social reading (with comments)
engage with authors in real-time or asynchronously 'in the book'

Anne Mangen, Ph. D. - University of Stavanger

why bother with print?
the role of the hands - fingers,etc. in reading
ergonomical affordances : books <> e-books <> computer
"people who read linear text comprehend more, remember more, and learn more than those who read hypertext"
multilinearity/hypertexts /education/ - where do video games come in? wii/kinect/joysticks & layout-wise much more complex than books
books - good spatial representation / games -> people can move characters in pixel-perfect positions for years
"sense the progress in your hands" - "human hand-eye coordination can be taken into consideration in optimal ways"

Ray Siemens INKE http://www.hci-book.org

Electronic Textual Cultures Lab - University of Victoria
imiatating the book is doomed to fail - they have to reference the full system in which they live, not just the 'page'.
reading is a device-specific activity - a whole system feeds into the 'hardware' we have in front of us

Robert Max Steenkist - the book in Later America

one of the major problems seems to be about trying to mimick books - we are not even close. We must think of this as its own media.