The really modern library

[imomus]

I spent Tuesday in an intense cluster of thinking people gathered around a circular table at the LSE, trying to generate useful (or usefully far-fetched) ideas about the library of the future with Bob Stein's Institute for the Future of the Book and guests -- about fifteen of us in all. Squeezed in between Cory Doctorow and Eames Demetrios, I scribbled notes in the margins of a copy of Varoom magazine Adrian Shaughnessy had given me in Denver. Somehow the illustrations, silhouettes and collages helped me formulate my stance: basically, that we shouldn't put all our eggs in the basket of digitization, and shouldn't forget that we have bodies.

Sitting nearby was Vienna-based Ruediger Wischenbart, the man whose translation research I based my article on English-language dominance and airline route models on. There was an actual librarian, Clive Izard from the British Library, who obviously had a lot to say about digitization and copyright problems, and dominated a lot of the conversation. There was the Tate's Kate Sloss, who archives artists' documents and materials. And, anchoring it all, very much at the centre of the centreless circular table in the Cold War-era wood-panelled room, the brilliant ex-Maoist Bob Stein, a sort of delicate, stooped, careful, pensive, serious, playful Bond villain planning culture's hideaway in a hollowed-out Pacific island.

Basically, my argument was that, while I appreciate the internet, I can't forget McLuhan's idea that the medium is the message. I worry that our windows on the world are getting increasingly ephemeral, and that each one of them is just a series of circular, self-legitimizing metaphors. While I appreciate the net and especially Google's ability to answer just about any question we have, it's the (largely unseen) framings that come with our current metaphor set -- the proscenium arch of the computer screen -- that disturb me. Imagine a cat or a rabbit watching you surf the internet: your body is rigid, you crane towards this small square of white light. For the rabbit, you're being very stupid and boring. The rabbit knows the important stuff is eating and shitting and running around. While we have bodies, we still live in the material world, and that's the basic bottom line. This may, of course, be a critique of culture in general. But if we ask what a more embodied culture would be like, we ought to remember Eno's idea that "the basic unit of cultural currency is empathy".

I wondered how long computers will exist in their current form: with keyboards, and using mostly text as their interface. I wondered if it wasn't time for literature to come full circle back to Homer, and become something spoken again rather than written and read -- because computers can do that for us. I wondered about ubicomp and everyware. I found myself at odds, a lot of the time, with Cory Doctorow, sitting on my right.

Cory is an odd man. Incredibly bright, he seems to have the multitasking skills of Shotoku Taichi: throughout the meeting, rather than interact with the other people around the table, he tapped away on his laptop, updating Boing Boing or sifting restlessly through images on File Pile. The man has the worst case of ADD I've ever seen; a geek so bright he's become an idiot. His speeches on copyright were super-well-informed, but came across like set pieces he'd delivered many times before at similar events.

Cory seemed, above all, completely committed to the internet's now, not the future; wedded if not welded to his keyboard. Everything, for him, could be fixed by some interface tweak, some new widget. I began to see him as a kind of post-human zombie, bodysnatched by the net itself and the coming machine intelligence it represents; a man whose brightness reflected the internet's ability to tell us everything and nothing at the same time, a man drifting on a rising, rushing white noise tide of information away from basic human-level empathy. Maybe I saw something of myself in him too -- a self I'm wary of becoming. An autistic node on a promiscuous net.

It was refreshing to turn from Cory to Keri Facer from Futurelab, whose emphasis on social justice and inclusion provided the sort of liberalism, empathy and awareness of the world I found so lacking in Cory's hacker-libertarian worldview (a worldview a lot of my work at Wired was intended to question, unsettle and infuse with some sort of ethical awareness).

If I was keen not to see all cultural information ending up serving some sort of post-human machine age in which we ourselves have become the ultimate "post-bit atom" -- notable for the mere fact of not being digital -- I was also keen not to lose the elitism of the book tradition: the fact that some monologues are better than conversations, that there's a "great tradition of the best that has been thought and felt", that not all text is chatroom or blog ephemera, that the book is actually a much more permanent back-up than the web, that recent digital forms (like Bob Stein's excellent CD-ROMs for Voyager) have been swept away a mere decade after they were invented whereas the book persists (some even say we ought to be backing the web up on paper!). At this point, rather than channeling Eno or McLuhan, I became Lord Reith rolled up with F.R. Leavis.

I felt that we were in danger of becoming Swift's Laputans, scholars so absent-minded they need to be bashed on the head every few seconds by servants carrying inflated bladders on sticks, just to remind them where they are. In our case, that reality is our material existence in a frail, overburdened world, the justice with which we organize human relationships, and the fact that we have bodies. Somewhere in there, I'd like to think, is the continuing existence of a small number of exceptional people who make these things we've called, up to now, books and stored, up to now, in libraries.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Soul only projects.

Interesting days.

[saint-claws.livejournal.com]

Are you familiar with the art of Stelarc? I'm more interested in his early skin hanging projects, but his current stuff involves becoming one of your post-human zombies.

[kaipfeiffer.livejournal.com]

i couldn't agree more with all you said here. while the internet grants possibilities that are indispensable for me, in publishing and receiving, and i can't even really imagine what it was like to try and get information on something really obscure before google, i think, that exactly because the computer seems to be able to present "everything" in digitized form (which isn't really true at all), the printed book will even be more valued in the future, precisely because so much is going on in the digital world, but all on the same level. in a digital presentation, shakespeare's collected works are indistinguishable from endless forum babble. the existing (still quite limited) computer interfaces are all about distraction, hopping from link to link, program to program. the book is all about focus. and the code filling its pages, in letters or pictures, has always been as virtual a reality as the cyber experience. it's still all in the brain. and even when digital paper gets ready for the market, it will replace printed newspapers, but not books that are produced with care for the materials and their haptic aspects. those are part of the ritual necessary to give a literary text or picture-writings, works that are not foremost about the factual information they contain, their value as singular entities. numinosity.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

Have you heard of Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page)? What do you think of it's concept?

get off the internet

[(Anonymous)]

Interesting...
A few days ago, I went to this ESEM seminar (European Seminar for Ethnomusicology) to present a paper on digital sound archives for popular music, arguing that we know a lot about digitizing the sound of "special" (traditional and non-stereophonic, wax cylinders, 78 rpm's, etc., etc.) recordings... and we don't know own to deal with popular music (and popular culture) materials... "what should enter the archive, and what should be sent to the trash"... I also argued that it's important for the sound archive not only the sound material but the carrier... so I couldn't agree more with you... People at libraries and archives look to the digital domain as a messianic solution to their money, storage, and preservation problems, and so on.

I cannot resist of remembering your post on iTouch when you proclaimed that with those iSometing (iTouch, iPod or iPhone) you simple cannot get off the internet (as the song from Le Tigre)...

I think this a non-ending debate! Get off the internet and let's look at the rabbits... in order for us to learn something that we keep forgetting...

Pedro Félix
(felixlx@yahoo.com)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I actually slagged it off yesterday at the meeting. It seems already somewhat neglected and abandoned. My experience with it is that you want, say, a bit of Moliere and instead you're confronted with this huge blurb about Project Gutenberg itself, and with copyright issues. It really confirms, for me, that the medium is the message. That an electronic text is not at all the same thing as a book. That we have to rethink what books are -- it's not good enough just to digitize them up and sling them up on the web "plain vanilla".

[kaipfeiffer.livejournal.com]

"it's not good enough just to digitize them up and sling them up on the web "plain vanilla"."

a true e-book has to be conceived according to its own specific parameters. seems like a banality, but it's astonishing how especially big corporate or institutional projects in that realm often seem to lack in the understanding of form. maybe because the question didn't even arise in the project papers, which then just got handed down to the executive staff with mainly archiving or standard browser intefaces in mind.

Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow

[(Anonymous)]

Digitizing texts, uploading archetypes from classic books and regular people serve as a frame of reference for future generations, of all cultures.

Jargon in red*

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"I worry that our windows on the world are getting increasingly ephemeral, and that each one of them is just a ."

How is holding a digital device, reading digital text any different from holding a book, reading print?:

"Imagine a cat or a rabbit watching you read a book: your body is rigid, you crane towards this small square of white paper. For the rabbit, you're being very stupid and boring."

Which leads me onto my next point:



Stop anthropomorphising.

But seriously, I get the point you're trying to make: computers and digital culture are detaching us from the material world around us.

but are they? I think your assumptions are nothing but stigma related to computers and your lack of foresight in regards to how digital media can be consumed. So I ask again, how would, say, a digital book device be any different from a book in regards to detaching the user from the world around his?

"Everything, for (Cory Doctorow), could be fixed by some interface tweak, some new widget."

Ie. He actually had ideas on practical solutions surrounding the digitisation of media as opposed to just expressing baffling, nonsensical tropes and opinions on what his pet rabbit might possibly think about his iMac?

(I love you really, Momus)

"I was also keen not to lose the elitism of the book tradition: the fact that some monologues are better than conversations"

Monologues are planned carefully, conversation aren't. I fail to see how that sets books apart from digital media.

"that there's a "great tradition of the best that has been thought and felt, that not all text is chatroom or blog ephemera"

I don't really understand this but I think you're trying to say that printed text is less frivolous that digital text? It's all relative.

"that the book is actually a much more permanent back-up than the web, that recent digital forms (like Bob Stein's excellent CD-ROMs for Voyager) have been swept away a mere decade after they were invented whereas the book persists"

You're being short-sighted; The methods and materials used to create printed text have been changing for hundreds of years, it isn't like they invented one method and that's stuck around forever since. We don't print books how they used to print books hundreds of years ago, just like we now use DVD instead of CD. Your comparison isn't valid, and I cant see any practical reason why digital media couldn't last as long as a book, which is prone to wear and tear itself and cant be as easily duplicated.

Typography, text (and ultimately communication) is the link between digital and print -- digital is much more versatile because it'll allow much more freedom in regards to how we can convey what we're trying to say.

*"A diction that is made up of strange (or rare) terms is a jargon." -- The Poetics of Aristotle

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

A good book can be quite relaxing. The internet is not that relaxing. By the way, anyone at the meeting who made it into an environmental issue?

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"i think, that exactly because the computer seems to be able to present "everything" in digitized form (which isn't really true at all), the printed book will even be more valued in the future"

Explain how digital media "isnt really true at all" but a printed book is. That seems like such an empty, sentimental statement to make. Explain how a printed text more accurately portrays shakespeares than digital text. Moreover, who are you to speak for Shakespeare. If we were alive today he might love digital text.

"shakespeare's collected works are indistinguishable from endless forum babble."

Wow, maybe you should try reading his work sometime, I can assure you its very different. Isn't that like saying that because dictionaries are printed in books, all narratives are as creatively empty as mere reference material? Thats clearly not the case.

"computer interfaces are all about distraction, hopping from link to link, program to program. the book is all about focus. "

I can focus on one web page and the information therein, because you can't doesnt mean theres a problem with the media (http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/8104/1192420727844on4.jpg). That statement is nonsense.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

" My experience with it is that you want, say, a bit of Moliere and instead you're confronted with this huge blurb about Project Gutenberg itself, and with copyright issues. It really confirms, for me, that the medium is the message."

You've failed to seperate web design from the medium. Project Gutenburg has designed their web page in a way you find annoying; that isnt down to the restrictions of digital media, that was a design decision by Project Gutenburg.

The generalisations you're making are like me buying a book where the the printing ink and the pages are a very simular colour (thus making the text hard to read) and complaining that this is why books sucks and on the internet I can turn off styles and look at the text in black a white if I so choose.

Re: Jargon in red*

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

Out of curiousity: Have you read Marshall McLuhan?

Re: Jargon in red*

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

You mean "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man"? I haven't, however a) I'm aware of the general premise of his book, which proposed that media, not the content, should be the focus of discussion –- popularly quoted as "the medium is the message." and b) I'm not disputing McLuhan's theories; I'm disputing a lot of empty sentimentality, plebeian stigma regarding digital media and people unable to differentiate between specific design decisions and general digital limitations.

medium is indeed as important as content, some would argue even more-so. And that's exactly what I've asked for clarification of -- The judgments people have made in this entry regarding digital media.

[(Anonymous)]

Let's not forget the simple fact that staring at a screen is a killer on the eyes. I can't surf and read text sites soildly for more than maybe a couple of hours before I begin to get a headache, whereas I can read printed text for twice as long with no ill effects at all.

Plus books don't crash, freeze up, get edited by the author half way through...

Let's see how easy this "digital paper" is on the eye, eh?

Re: Jargon in red*

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

It is not only "the medium is the message" that is explained in Understanding Media. You should give it a read. Do you know about "Hot" and "Cool" mediums?

Re: Jargon in red*

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

Eh, I meant Hot and cool media (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_and_cool_media#.22Hot.22_and_.22cool.22_media).

Re: Jargon in red*

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

I just read the wikipedia entry on "hot" and "cold" media. As a general rule audio is cold, visual is hot. Print is hot, which means books are nearly always hot -- it's tied to "consumer attention". Digital has the capacity to be either extremely hot or extremely cold, the entire spectrum.

If you're recommending the book to me; thanks. I'll check it out.

If you're implying I should read it because I'm lacking insight; not meaning to sound rude but cut to the chase and make your point already; what am I missing?

thanx

[(Anonymous)]

I would appreciate if everyone kept up this conversation. I'm a 'librarian' (whatever that means these days) and participating in a panel in a couple months on ethics, digital libraries, and community. All very pertinent.

<3, c

[kaipfeiffer.livejournal.com]

sorry, you didn't understand me at all. i am talking about presentation, not about content. which i said clearly in my comment. i never dreamed anyone could take from it that i think shakespeare's plays or poems are equivalent to the content of discussion forums.
also, i didn't mean that digital media are "untrue" as opposed to printed books, but that not every aspect of non-digital media can be digitized. i know quite some people who think that way, but a painting or a book have certain qualities as objects that are genuine to their physicality and don't translate when digitized. others do, and i have no problems looking at pictures on a screen, or reading text. it is just different, and i'm stressing out the differences that will keep "analogue" media from vanishing, because i see these differences as not negligable.
as someone producing e-books and publishing on the web, i certainly don't have too big a problem coping with its specifics, unlike your not very elevated assumption. but nonetheless, it's not only me who sees the internet and its information flow through websites and e-mails as a challenge for organization and focus. recent surveys show office workers constantly distracted by incoming e-mails or the possibility to do some web research at any instant. apparently, most office workers spend many hours per day by stopping to work on their task every few minutes and take in some new, but in most cases irrelevant information. or maybe all the office workers taken into evaluation for the psychological study in question were,as you suggest, confused negroes. at least as confused as you seem to have been by my little comment.

http://www.culturalcurrency.ca/

[pay-option07.livejournal.com]

I would like to see everything backed up on clay tablets.
After EM pulses and fire storms they will be the only surviving artifacts.

[(Anonymous)]

The more I think about this stuff, the more I think the McLuhan quote is apt.

I just read somewhere that apparently the average newspaper reader spends more time with a print edition on a single day than the average visitor to a paper's website spends in an entire month. That's fascinating, because it means exactly the same content is being used in radically different ways depending on the medium. More specifically, the vast amount of choice we have on the Internet actually narrows our intake in some ways. We glance at a newspaper website, click on a few headlines, maybe scan a longer piece and that's it. All the peripheral stuff - which might turn out to be the more interesting stuff - passes us by.

- Hugo

[kaipfeiffer.livejournal.com]

i'd like to add that i don't advocate the printed book out of any sentimentality, but insist on their potential numinosity. many printed books, of course, fail to achieve that, but i'm talking about the appropriately produced book. a well printed drawing on carefully chosen paper just looks very different than on a computer screen. some pictures look very fine on the screen, some even better than printed, others don't. there are differences, and i'm just not someone who believes they don't matter. in the case of text, the printed book is more about the emphasizing of the value of the literary work by making it into its own, undividable object. sometimes unjustly so, sometimes not. i also like to make notes in the margins of books, and to stick in many page markers. and to have them lying around opened for weeks, and in piles on my desks. don't know why that would be sentimental. love my computer madly. all for digitized porn instead of analogue jerking material. but i prefer fucking ladies consisting of human flesh to cybersex. quite sentimental, in that case.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"i didn't mean that digital media are "untrue" as opposed to printed books, but that not every aspect of non-digital media can be digitized."

Obviously. But that book of "Hamlet" you bought from Amazon.com isnt "true" either. The acid-proof paper is of a different type than of the first ever copies printed, or the paper shakespeare wrote it on. The smell is different, the feel is different, the cover is different, the size is different, the font is different, the ink is different.

You're never going to capture true absolute "authenticity" with a modern book. Its just as much of an imposter as digital media. You're over-stating the authenticy of your reproductions.

As for paintings not being the same digitized; that's a completely different kettle of fish.

Originals of manscripts, scrolls, books etc will never be replicated effectively until we have advanced virtual reality that incorporates the 5 senses (which is quite a way off). But digital is perfectly good as a "back up" for its content because reprinted books are just as untrue to the original.


" and i'm stressing out the differences that will keep "analogue" media from vanishing"

no, youre failing to understand that books are not all the same. unless someone goes to great lengths to replicate an old book, in all ways, it's just as false as digital and purely down to preference.

"but nonetheless, it's not only me who sees the internet and its information flow through websites and e-mails as a challenge for organization and focus."

Your problem is with specific digital enviroments and how theyre designed by people, thats not the same as focusing on digital limitations.

"recent surveys show office workers constantly distracted by incoming e-mails "

Anyone would think they couldnt turn off their email clients...

"at least as confused as you seem to have been by my little comment."

I'm not confused, youre just failing to see outside the box on this matter (eg. one book is equal to another when its not) and you're confusing specific bad design with digital limitations.

[kaipfeiffer.livejournal.com]

no, i don't think all books are the same. i have published quite a few, overseen the production on all of them, even printed some myself. i always tried to conceive/design them appropriately. as a website should be, too, of course. i never disputed the possibility of appropriate publishing in digital form. but still, the book as an object has different functions. to some, they are not important, to me, they are. but i want the internet, too. why would i publish there, otherwise?
but i really don't see why the printed book must refer to ancient processes, and what the concept of "authenticity" has to do whith it, at all. no clue, really. really happy about acid-free paper and pantone colours.