Books = paper (hardware) + texts (software) & its the software that matters
Book
v scroll
The
book, or codex, was invented in the 2nd century AD by early Christians. It is thought that they were keen to distinguish the physical form of their holy book from that of the Jewish Torah, which remains loyal to the scrolled format.Before this the
scroll was the dominant form for writing but a scroll had its weaknesses:
1.
needs
to be held in both hands
2.
difficult
to unroll
3.
rolls
on a flat surface
4.
difficult
to carry
5.
difficult
to store
6.
written
only on one side
7.
difficult
to navigate to specific place
There
were many advantages of the book over the scroll:
1.
hold
in one hand
2.
take
notes with spare hand
3.
sit
on a flat surface
4.
easy
to carry
5.
easy
to store
6.
pages
give sense of place
7.
written
on both sides
The book
gave the hardware of the book a boost in terms of its software, the text. Page
numbers content pages and indexes could all be added to aid navigation.
Scroll
v page in learning
This
scroll versus page technology divide lives on today in screen technology, where
page based web pages live alongside vertical scrolling. We can see this in
Wikipedia, with its page structure for entries with scrolling for reading.
Window panes add depth making multiple tasks possible. Another interesting
scroll versus page structural debate concerns the modern scroll of film, then
video. The media of the moving image were literally the technology of reels or scrolls
but now handled by delivering fast refresh pages. However, in terms of learning,
the distinction between the continuous scrolled presentation of content versus pages
under the control of the user, remains a sharp divide. It is still difficult to
search and navigate video content for learning purposes. The navigation of forward,
back and fast forward remain at the navigational level of ancient scrolls.
Book as hardware
It is useful to separate the hardware and software
components of books, as the word ‘book’ has two meanings. First, the whole
physical object of paper and text; second, just the text. Authors don’t write
books, they write texts. It is publishers who package texts into books by
commissioning covers, paper type and weight, font and other features. A book,
as hardware, is light, portable and never runs out of battery. It is undoubtedly
an attractive, well bound, object that doesn’t break when dropped and is easy
to hold for reading. Even its flexibility makes it comfortable to hold or lie
on one’s lap when read. The physical pages make it easy to know where you are
in a book and how much you’ve completed. Paper, as a reflective medium, is also
eminently readable. Block shaped books also makes them easy to store on
shelves. There can be no doubt that the physicality of the book contributes to
its appeal.
Book as software
The
most useful part of a book is, of course, its software, or text. We think of
the book as a single text but early books tended to contain a miscellaneous mixture
of different texts on different subjects, often in different languages by different
authors. Paged books encouraged the development of readable content as texts were:
1.
chunked into chapters & paragraphs
2.
spaced (words and sentences)
3.
punctuated to aid reading
4.
capitalised for sentences & emphasis.
5.
listed by contents
6.
indexed
7.
appendices & bibliographies
All of this took centuries of slow incremental progress. Note
that these are features of the text, not the physical book. This is the
software, not the hardware. For most of the technological advances in books
were either in the process of production (printing, ink and paper) or software
improvements.
Book and screen technology
Although the book, as a physical technology, has
developed over nearly eighteen centuries into finely-honed, much loved, object,
that technology is being challenged by screen based reading and writing. There
has been a social explosion of publishing, writing and reading on screens,
aided by the internet. This has been boosted by good, readable screen
technology, mobile devices and inexpensive e-book readers.
Traditionalists may wave
their reading glasses in horror but to turn books into a fetish is simply to
deny the inevitable. Real books are great, but let’s not confuse the medium
with the content, or hardware with software, namely books with texts. Just as journalists
and newspaper owners fail to realise they’re in the ‘news’ not the ‘newspaper’
business, so book fans and publishers sometimes fail to realise that this is
about writing and reading, not books. Books are simple a piece of technology.
Just as the book was a hardware improvement on the technology
of the scroll, so screen technology is an improvement on the hardware of the
physical book. Books destroy trees, require landfill and are expensive to
transport and store. In turning atoms into bits, books become weightless, distribution
trivial and the problem of storage disappears.
Screen base delivery also puts books in the realm of
software control, so that it is easier to:
1.
download
2.
store
3.
search
4.
hyperlink
5.
change font etc.
6.
highlight
7.
comment
We can now see where
this can lead us, or more specifically lead us in improving learning. Why lock
up knowledge and the ability to learn in libraries, schools and physical books,
when we can publish and distribute it at marginal cost to everyone.
Books and learning
There
is a tendency to think of books as being an intrinsic good, but many would
question the role of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Mao Tse Tung’s Little Red
Book as instructive or progressive. Similarly, many would doubt that the
literal reading of sacred texts, such as The Bible, Torah and Koran, are always
forces for good.
Professor Pierre
Bayard ‘s How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read is a deep
analysis of the ambiguous role of readers and books. We take books too
seriously, forgetting that many are bought and not read, skimmed or talked
about as if they had been read, even forgotten. Bayard throws the book at
books.
Books
have a special status as ‘almost objects of worship’ and non-readers are
stigmatised. Yet reading is often non-reading, as we forget most of what we
read, almost as quickly as it is read. As we forge forward, content is
forgotten and disappears in the wake of memory. Most reading is forgetting.
He’s really on to something here. I habitually underline, mark, comment and
summarise on the books I read. Yet it is almost taboo to underline, mark books,
and blasphemous to tear out a page or chapter. Life is short and books are
long. It’s OK to skim, as many books are padded out to conform to the standard 250
page norm. In fact, for many, the fact that most of what you read will be
forgotten, means a summary is adequate.
Academics cook
the books
As an
academic, he is at his best in describing a world he knows well, where
academics discuss and teach books to students who have also not read the book.
Teaching pressurises teachers into talking about books they have not read.
Students respond by pretending to read long reading lists they never in fact
read. Short-cuts are taken by all. It's a game where reading is the facade and
non-reading the reality.
Every trick
in the book
What’s
clever is the way he hauls in authors to support his case. Montaigne’s honest
reflections on reading, Oscar Wilde’s ‘100 worst books’ (books we should not
read), David Lodge’s expose of the Academy’s dependence on unread books.
Umberto Eco, Balzac, Green, Shakespeare, Joyce, Proust and others are all used
to build a case, not against books, but against the bogus idea of books as
being pure and sacrosanct.
You can’t
judge a book by its lover
So
reading, and the culture of reading, is not what we think it is. It’s full of
deceit, snobbery and false claims. Bayard exposes many of these taboos. Take a
leaf out of his book and see reading, not as being synonymous with books, but
in all its wonderful variations in terms of style, length, authors and media.
New media and self-publishing are tearing apart the myth that reading is
synonymous with books. It may well be that reading in many ways has freed
itself from the tyranny of books.
Conclusion
The Book (codex) was a superior technology to the scroll
and in the form of hand written manuscripts had a good 1200 year run. The
printing press scaled up the process of replication and has had another good
500 year run. Building on this, screen based reading has given us another massive
boost in scalability, making books weightless, volumeless, easy to distribute
and searchable.
What we are witnessing is, perhaps, the death of the book
as the dominant form of written expression. A much wider range of forms of
expression have emerged. Wikipedia is not really a book in the sense that the
Encyclopedia Britannica was a book. Txting, posting, commenting, blogging are
challenging the long-form book as the writing and reading medium of choice.
Books themselves are being seen as just one form of expression among many.
2 Comments:
this made me think about the similarities between ebooks and scrolls. I love the portability of ebooks but really miss the easy navigation and indexability of books. 'search' just isn't the same.
Good point about indexes. My Kindle has books with indexes but you have to put the page number in and GoTo that page. The problem is the variability of page sizes in a digital reformattable context. This will be solved when indexes hyperlink directly to the word but this requires extra work by the electronic publisher. In the end electronic indexing will solve the problem - just a matter of time.
Bookmarking is one advantage e--book readers have over 'turn down ear of page' approach in physical book. Generally navigation to dictionary etc is superior on e-books. It took nearly 2000 years for the navigational structure of the book to develop. E-books have achieved much in just a few years.
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