[iDC] Media dies more slowly than some would like

[loreso]

Il giorno 05/dic/07, alle ore 23:58, Brian Holmes ha scritto:

> Yeah, that is a deep and truly interesting potential change, it  
> will be
> very curious to see how it plays out. The big thing about the paper  
> book
> is the sense of closure, achieved by the unchangeability of the final,
> ready-for-print text, and reiterated each time you close the cover and
> that literary universe becomes a simple, portable object again.  
> It's not
> certain that sense of closure will pass over to the electronic medium.

I would like to resonate Brian's remark with a question. Maybe not  
enough attention has been put in this discussion on the intrinsic  
value of the P-book as  witness of a  precise historical moment. We  
know that starting from papyrus until now,  a book read in every  
successive historical moment provides a reasonably faithful  
representation of a specific knowledge of its time (not necessary  
true, but faithfully contextual of this specific moment). Yes, books  
are subject to revisions, re edititions, betrayals, but still the  
succession of original editions make their evolution traceable.  And  
pyres of burning books at least make visible flames and smoke...

How E-texts, basing tendentially their survival strategy on  
redundancy more than stability, will respond to an issue of stability  
of the content, and not only of the functionality of the container?  
How effective is the historical traceability  of electronic text  
revisions today, at the speed the "disorganized capitalism" supports   
the technological evolution of formats and supports?
Following the recent [shelf life] thread, we know that electronic  
files frenetically need to be upgraded and re-coded in order to  
guarantee their future readability.  Which guarantee give the  
emerging technologies, in comparaison i.e to ink printed on paper,   
about the stability  of their content?
Maybe the sense of art today is in a return to orality, fully diving  
in the natural decay of the product and exalting the process in se.  
But what about the wider knowledge heritage that humanity assigned to  
libraries?
We could immagine softwares able to search & change parts or entire  
documents all over the net, for sure easily than searching and  
distroying every copy of a book all over the shelves.

I don't believe that the printed book will disappear soon, neither  
that its significance will be reduced to the one of an old horse- 
powered vehicle until the electronic media won't solve also this  
issue, if ever...

Lorenzo