It’s not just about the printing press! The history of the book presents us with a complete, observable communications revolution. The historical record allows us to examine the whole of a vast socio-cultural, political, and economic change over a period of some three to five hundred years (depending on whose perspective you prefer). By following the developments in manuscript and print book production, tied to the changes in the technologies used to produce those texts, we can also chart the various changes in social organization, politics and economics.
“Can books only exist in the paper-printed media? Can the text be separated from paper to be reused as a book through digital media? Is such a discussion relevant to the subject of books?”
Some key ideas to consider:
- the history of the book
- the end of books (!?)
- the net_reading/writing_condition
- What are some current views about the emergence and diffusion of media?
Was There a Reading Revolution in the New American Republic?
Professor Robert Gross explores the history and historiography of book history and reading in pre Civil War America. This lecture was originally given at the University of Toronto in the fall of 2008.
There's a lot in here, but what I remember most is the picture from the early American republic of correspondents using newspapers -- and their preferred postal rates -- as a medium for private messages. They would routinely add private notes in the margins of the public printed copy as a way to stay in touch, share news, share thoughts. Kinda like graffiti, in a way. It would be interesting to see one of those documents and look for connections between the thoughts of private lives and the news of the public life.
ReplyDeleteGross' lecture really got me thinking about one of the seed questions in particular:
ReplyDeleteQ2. Can books only exist in the paper-printed media? Can the text be separated from paper to be reused as a book through digital media? Is such a discussion relevant to the subject of books?
I feel like the concept of the physical "book" is one that's on its way out. I'm currently doing research for my capstone project at MSVU, and while I'm using a fair number of books in my study, they’re all hosted on my computer! I find, especially with newer books on technology, the library tends to only stock e-book versions. For me, this is ideal as their electronic nature makes for easier highlighting and copying and pasting, especially when writing a research paper.
I mention this because the school explicitly refers to these documents as e-books –not texts, or online articles. So while they may not have the form of a physical book, academia still defines them as such.
Going forward however, I think we’re going to start making that distinction less and less. I spend a significant portion of my day online and not once do I usually think of the form the text I’m reading is presented in. Whether it be a Tweet, newspaper article or e-book I think of them all simply as texts. I don’t see this as a good thing or bad thing – it’s merely a consequence of the electronic age we live in.