Event London 14 December 2005 LSE
THE FUTURE OF THE BOOK
14 December 2005
Participants:
Daniel Charney – Senior Tutor Design Products RCA – project about reading and recording your reading into a book from the postural or the intimacy of reading – the sound of your voice or some one elses – my project is trying to reading into the book and getting rid of the electronicss
Manolis Kelaidis – MA IDE RCA – I’m planning on doing a project on books – I’m interested in the book itself as an object. The reason I’m here is to get inspiration
Pascale Scheurer – Surface to Air – enables creative initiatives in architecture – we’re building up a network of young architects, we’re creating a publication, and we’re interested in the relationship between events and publications
Matthew Falla – MA Interaction Design RCA – Looking at producing responsive networks, working with Carol Lorac at looking at augmenting printed books.
Suzi Winstanley – Design Heroine interested in architecture and peoples interaction – we recently produced a book with a DVD and am interested in moving it forward
Carol Lorac – Research Fellow London Multi Media Lab and Institute of Social Psychology – ecurrently writing a book about the the composing process in multi-media compostion – audi0-visual, multi- media composers – how are stories told through the multi-media process. I am committed to maintaining the written book but also have a relationship with the multi-media
Ola Ogunyemi – Senior Lecturer in Journalism in University of Lincoln I am interested in how indigenious groups have been marginalised in communication. I am interested in the African Diaspora who have been marginalised – these people want to express themselves and they need empower. Technologies are helping people express themselves in these cultural identiies – from planning through production and performance. It would be interesting to see how we can have a hybrid from oral and technological
Kyriaki Tortopidou – I am a great fan of the book, I am writing about the history of the book – here we are looking at the Future of the Book and I’m interested in the question of what’s wrong with the book today. A lot of images are used in my PhD and I’m interested in producing a Publication that will use new technology and make me a fan of the digital future of the book.
Harriet Harriss – Design Heroine – We’re innovating in a new market which hybridises between architecture, interaction design and play. We’re interested in our book which had many tactile elements we’re interested in the physical engagement of the book.
Patrick Humphreys – I first got interested in the history of the book when I was 5, it was about a typewriter – it had a lovely typeface – then I found you could turn the pages but nothing happened – I wanted it to be an interactive system.. I’ve also been always interested in showing and telling through film. I was dreaming of things in terms of what technology can do for everyone. It now becomes possible for everyone. You also when you read about what people say. A lot gets lost, and I realise that things I know from many different domains begins to inform what is possible. I’m interested in keeping it open. We’ve also had dreams of working in practise. Some of it is about the interface with computers, however this has changed. I’m not convinced that technology is putting paper out of date. There’s a lot about talking and reading. I’m also interested in the functionality about what is book? You can take it to the beach. The book has all kinds of functionality. We still think that the book itself as an idea has been so successful that it has a special future.
Garrick Jones – future of the book, collaborative authoring
Tom Barker – Professor of Industrial Design & Engineering, also chair of special advisory council to Arts Council. I’m here as an author. I’m particularly concerned about archiving. Also the death of narrative – in Hollywood is about sensation and impact. As the book morphs into the digital form its becoming fragmented. I guess my concern is about narrative getting lost – on the other hand we have the emergence of live narrative blogs and filming of disasters. In the past the book was personal and an elite occupation.
Lewis Pinault – Fellow Institute of Social Psychology
Apologies from Bob Stein – Voyager Expanded Books, Night Kitchen (open source) Mellon Foundation
Annenburg School of Communication – University of Southern California
Here are the three big questions for the round table, but please feel free to introduce your own:
1. What is a book?
It could be claimed that some key developments in the history of “what a book is” were:
- Codex rather than scroll form (improved random access, portability)
- Use of paper (rather than cloth or skin) for the pages
- Printing – enabling for wide distribution and access (initiation of “mass” – one/few to many) communications
- Indexing
- Inclusion of interactive components
- Simulation of interactive components
- Simulation of “book” features in electronic documents (later with incorporation of multimedia and interactive elements).
But are these development those which define the essential functionality of the “book” as we understand it today? What is special about the form and functionality of “book”.
Patrick: I’m interested in the history of the book and what it can be today – although I’m sceptical about the future of technology – Bruce Robinson was the founder of the Diagram book – invented and designed things not simply in terms of pages and texts. When I first got hold of the NightKitchen toolkit – an expanded book – we had pages that we could do indexes, and pages, you could also make annotations, you could trigger videos. Bruce was very critical, he said it was the idea of the text book. We kept that idea for MSc students from scratch without the benefit of composing. It required quite a high level of skill to get right in the amount of time they had. We found that giving people was quite good at teaching people how to annotate very quickly – because it was build around the spine – people could understand the form.
People originally created narrative in space, like cathedrals, through the network.
Carol: I think Eco says it quite usefully about books you read, and books you consult. This leads to the question of narrative. I think the narrative is crucial to the way we understand the world. I think there are dangers because of the way the audio-visual language is developing – we’re at the same point when writing was for the elite. I think we’re at the same stage in the audio-visual component. Because this is in the hands of the elite it could be dangerous.
Tom: I think narrative as a concept won’t be lost. We have this situation where a large number of narratives are required in a book – a website doesn’t need a narrative. I’ve seen Hollywood movies being effects based which is alarming. Its about quick fix and not narrative. What’s very interesting is what happened to virtual reality? The most successful form of virtual reality every developed is the book. Its not a battle of whether the new technologies will replace it. There’s an element in the brain which has evolved which is a language centre which is different from the centre processing image – this enables us o have the power of language which is part of our physical system. Apart from a powerful virtual reality system it is intrinsic. We still have only two ways of recording it – in audio terms and writing it down.
Carol: So much communication is visual as well.
Tom: Its pretty difficult to split these media
Daniel: You were talking about two types of books – may be there’s a third type -= that of authorship. The interpretation of the reader is becoming part of the book. The media allows you layer interpretative layers. You not only consult you also become part of the authorship. Like Wikipedia.
So three:
Books you read, Books you consult and Books you Collectively Author.
Tom: I’d argue that that’s a development of the book
Daniel; It’s one of the biggest shift – it enables publishers to offer these facilities.
Carol: You’re suggesting that this can only occur in electronic forms.
Daniel: I disagree about the narrative. People are a lot more fluid of storyboarding – the shift from designing objects to designing things for use is narrative based.
Tom: There’s no narrative coming out of cycle times and fast production in the East. The contribution of the reader is pretty profound, Calvino’s ruminations about the context in which we’re reading is very important.
Daniel: An image of Bruno Manari trying to read in an uncomfortable chair.
Ola: What are the problems inherent in todays books? One of the problems is the way it has caused a gulf between the illiterate and the illiterate. Nigeria 141 milliion people (1 in 5 African). 30% are literate. 70% are illiterate. Which leads to problems – the elite are only talking amongst themselves. Books make negotiated meaning irrelevant. A book causes a delayed response. We need to find away to bring the masses on board. They’re not illiterate visually – but in terms of the text. Its note available for those who cannot afford.
In Nigeria there are 250 languages - if you want English language to be the language of government then you need to teach everyone to speak English. There are indigenous communities, traditions and oral history that is very rich.
Tom: Is literacy improving?
Ola: There’s no incentive. Most of the problem their parents are too poor to fund education. As scholars we need to think about this.
Daniel: What are the things that reach these communities? If you want to get the literacy, what else is getting there. Can the role of the book be transferred to another object.
Ola: People in Nigeria are taught about Buckingham Palace, the first time I became aware of my culture was when I went to Russia and people asked me about my culture.
Tom: Do you have children?
Matt: A stepping stone to literacy – would the goal be to increase literacy with something that’s in between. Or would we say 70% are illiterate, we need to find something else.
Patrick: Its an enormous problem – we assume that all countries want to promote literacy. In the first years of school we privilege all forms of learning – and then we prioritise reading, writing and arithmetic. Literacy is also about disciplining and positioning people as Foucault says.
Ikea creates instructions without a word of text.
To understand literacy, and audio-visual literacy as a language, we need to talk about layers – an interpretive layer where you comment on it – but this interpretation can also be different for all. An audio-visual component contains far more information, as distinct from the textual. Language is coded, and control can be a force for direction and control. Certain poets try to make it more open.
Multi-media attempts to make it more open. Current joint authorship is at the microlevel of the text. In the 1980’s I was writing abook “How Voters Decide” with Hilda Himmelwite – we each had different political ideologies. It was slower and at the high level of text.
When we work with students we encourage them to bring in other voices. But once you have “Book” in a multi-media sense of something you get many layers present simultaneously. Which enables a richer view through the layers. There are many issues like how do books work like this, how is this about rich and restricted languages. There’s alot required to understand functionality about how these different layers work.
Daniel: You’re raising a particular point . I’ve recently seen the “Centre of the Book” - they work with artists to work within the medium of book. They started with 700 people now 15000. Their motive is very different they want to preserve the book.
My interest is in creating a different type of book.
Garrick: Infrastructure that relates to rules that bound systems may be the “new spine” e.g. Wikipedia, which has scaled through the application of an infrastructure operating according to a very simple instruction set. Process is also worth considering. For example Bruce Mau the designer has created a new type of book (S,M,L,XL) and “Life-Style” through the application of collaborative processes in his studio.
Daniel: Bruce Mau makes luxury items
Garrick: I agree, but process can be put to many uses.
Lewis: If on the one hand you possess the richness of the web, and there is a sufficiency of independent agents and f the system is bounded correctly you get a blooming of new stuff.
Daniel: This is the strength of the browser
Lewis: And there are rules, alghorithms in the background that enable things to emerge. I would be interested in this discourse. How do we recognise the new pattern when its there, are their definitive systems, how do we know the mathematical forms.
Patrick: We mustn’t forget about people in the system. Like Blogging, for a while it opens a possibility, but then it settles in. Sara was a participatory media project in Peru – where people were given cameras and were good at creating narrative. The key point was about sharing and exchanging, where we used restricted language and layers. People would interchange video by hand. It was slow but exchange was taking place. There was a lot of interchange. Now the net enables this to happen. We wanted to make it sustainable. When people went back to make their second movie – they wanted to make it better – later on they started to think about the received video . People had to make things that people would enjoy making as well as making things that people would enjoy receiving. Otherwise you just make a fad. You need to discover a process that internally itself enables the ground for sustainability..
Eco talks about 3 types of labyrinth – On writing the name of the Rose
1. The thread of Ariadne – the linear labyrinth
2. The Engineering view of the labyrinth – you can see the labyrinth from the outside (Chartres0
3. He prefers the Cognitive View of Labyrinth – the idea of the Rhizome (Deleuze and Guattari) the labyrinth you’re always making. The problem with this labyrinth is its massive it could go in any direction. The problem is how do you know where to go next – navigating through uncharted waters.
4. Type 4 Labyrinth – when you realise you’re not the only active agent in the labyrinth – when it becomes collaborative. If you can do that then you’ve succeeded in doing things that are more than evolutionary. Although it’s a very exciting way of working together to reduce the complexity of the labyrinth.
Lewis: There’s an important irony. When we say we reduce complexity, we have to desire to embrace complexity, to revel in its richness. If you seek the simple you reduce the richness of the system. In the context of the book – is there out there a sufficiently light set of bounds that will let us pour our experiences into it the in hope of finding each other.
Patrick: I think storytelling is important. Its difficult from a grammatical perspective. However, to your point about enjoying complexity. Storytelling for the point of providing enjoyment for the person who hears it is vital. There are two main histories – story telling you say and storytelling you read
Daniel: One of the things about storytelling, is the next time you tell it changes and it’s a bit different. Storytelling can be much stronger perhaps. Character building – can be important in the future of the book. I was interested in the functionality of the form - the spine. One of the ways of looking at it might be looking at it from this perspective.
Garrick: The points about the spine, bounding the system with simple rules and Storytelling for other peoples enjoyment reminds me of the story that I heard told by a group of singers from Zimbabwe. They played on a combination of original African instruments and contemporary instruments. They told us that most of their music had been recently composed, that some of the music were tribal chants that shifted with the times, but that there were 5 songs that were handed down from mother to daughter, were always taught, and were not allowed to be changed. Ethnomusicologists thought that these unchanging tunes were probably 30,000 years old. These tunes contained all the information that was necessary to enable the continuous innovation of the other forms that they generated.
Ola: The songs haven’t changed because they are routed in rituals and beliefs. The documentation of these unchanging songs are held in the person of the King. I think we should try to map out a trajectory to entry of time and space. Then there’s a salad bowl of ideas. Then there’s an exit.
Tom: The salad bowl is a strong metaphor as are the layers. I have a partial background in computer programming – I see code moving around when I see typing. When you meet a great author – you don’t say that was a fantastic book what typewriter did you use. The evolution of the code is interesting. The code was a green text and linear. Then parallel computing arrived and we had to work out micro-threading. Now its object based and you cannot look at the code or script. Even in Linux the codes are object based. It only became easier for everyone. Has that had more of an influence? The AA are very interested in 3D programming – they use this programme called Maya which comes from animation. People who create with it claim these designs as their buildings – who is the author of the building?
Lewis: I think there is a loss, by learning to work in base codes people can be more creative. “In the beginning was the command line” Neal Stephenson.
Patrick: The French used a very different approach – they put layers on top of common lisp – you had to create a conceptual model. But without having a use for the model you don’t know what you’re going to programme. Then the model has been formalised – object orientation made it easier. In parallel, Carnap wrote you need the conditions of use of the logical frames – and ascribing referents in the descriptive. Then along came windows. Director allows you to do this – object orientation in the back and the front is audio-visual. You can’t find the code. I think that coding has got professionalized. What people buy in everyday computer magazine there is now less to buy. Except in audio-visual material. I would like to have the computing power back. [Tom has done the same]
Daniel: You’re using Director to combine what?
Patrick: We want to create a user interface which can deal with everything and behind that we need code to deal with it. What we build are interactive software and expanded books.
Daniel: The environment is what? Aptrick: Director.
Tom: There was a golden rule in programming not to mix data with code – which Director broke and which became accepted.
Perhaps it’s easier to say what is not a book? A book is not an obect orientated thing.
Carol: We have to revisit our definition of what is a book. We were looking at complexity. These notions have occurred because we all see and hear. This has to be translated into symbolic systems. The complexity today is that we have a second authored way
Interactive and non- linear – we have to think about how this works together with the book.
Part Two
The Group spent time after lunch coming up with a list of questions they would like to take forward.
- Discussion about how things going forward could be organised?
- The notion and definition of literacy?
- The idea of literacy in the mobile phone market – the book in the network?
- The issue ownership – the craft of making and receiving literacy?
- SMS – multi-media literacy?
- What kinds of mass literacy do we need
- We could make a book? Have we talked about the definition of what is book?
- The idea of the physical and the virtual book-?
- The emotion of the book – the haptics of a book?
- Education and the book?
- Mechanisms for entering the technology – like the title of the book – successful mechanisms for entering the technology?
- When does something stop being a book – or become something else?
- What is the Future of the Book?
- what is under threat?
- Author & Authority?
- Are we moving toward cognitive reading?
Following a discussion about organisational forms, the group divided into three, in order to consider the questions.
One Group
Why do people write books? We considered access and authority and content?
We also realised that a simple politically correct solution is not possible – a book always ends positioning and creating some form of power. However books exist in networks. Authors have a craft which are something people desire. We don’t want a leveller – books for all and by all. But we want diversity and quality? Who says what quality is? What we want is wide communication, enrichment of context, and the support of creativity in the world.
The elite authors – authors with a special craft – Arthur Ransom, Beckett, George Bernard Shaw for example, play a special role in making the world and will always be with us.
The group referred to Pepys and that dairies are going to be made illegal to be kept amongst civil servants.
The group also referred us to the film – La L’ectrice.
Two Group
This group considered what is a Book and what is not a book. Form relates to use rather than production constraints. Magazines for example are about quality, considered content and temporality. Context is important. A book read aloud is not a book – it is performative and possesses a different function Under a restrictive regime, content is more important, books could be a threat. Books can become symbolic – burn my clothes but not my books. We have emotional relationships with books
Books up until 1990 were reflected light – now they can also be emitted light.
Authoring and intention – is important – a book is ordered and structured
Daniel: I found very interested the idea that a book is a book when it is being read. This taps into the point about life. But that could change now.
Tom: We came up with a similar things – the book is only animated by the reading of it. Neville Brody talked about it being wet paint – the digital media is wet while the paper medium is dry.
Daniel: Even on Skype you have to press send.
Garrick: Yes, and at that point it immediately becomes something else. If you consider the social form of the book, once it is published (or sent) it immediately enters the domain of critical discourse.
Ola: The perception of book is not just dead content within the book but it can move to another form.
Matt: We decided that frozen was better than dead – frozen, packaged, shipped, microwaveable.
Tom: You’ve got a good point, the book of the play of the film.
Kyriaki: You’re not an author until you’ve been read.
Daniel: Its not the same for a drawing or a poem.
Kyriaki: How do you define this point?
Ola; Authorship can be claimed when someone says “Ola says this”.
Three Group
This group considered what is a book? Carols definition of viewing a book as a receptacle for holding together different stories. The types of media could change depending on the context.
This would allow different books to be interpreted. Different forms of interpretation are imposed by the reader, if books involve to include different forms of media.
An issue we discussed – with books going on line – gives the reader the chance for the reader to be involved in extending the book. The book wouldn’t be frozen. Would authors subscribe to the idea of readers buying chunks rather than the whole thing?
Books have traditionally been associated with a certain calibre of thinking but with new media we need to attract this calibre in different formats.
What proportion of people actually read books versus watching tv.
The Future of the Book?
Tom: There is a question of the suitability of the book or the format.
Daniel: This relates to expectations.
Tom: I do get slightly concerned about the worthiness of the book
Ola: Values determine our perspectives on the book. I think we need to consider how to link to the generation that’s been left behind – so that they can also participate.
Tom: Second hand American cook books going back to the 60’s have no value, because the context has shifted.
We considered the way forward?
A visual bank of what people accept as books?
Could it be a collection of extreme books? The borders of books. It would be fun to have a mixed inter-disciplinary conference – screening of abstracts, and papers, also bringing in different kinds of stakeholders.
Create a dream list of Papers we would like to hear from?
Create a dream list of Stakeholders?
Does the AHRB sponsor this – it would be good for them because of the physicality.
Our proposal to Bloombergs was to salvage books that were over produced – many books are pulped and before doing so are sent to prisons to have holes drilled through them – I wonder if there’s something to explore – reuse, remainder and redundancy – the material lifecycle of the book.
A Wish List of Collaborators
It would be great to bring in people from Google, the guy from Microsoft who invented the autosummary, Jimmy Wale from Wikipedia, the Library of unwritten books, a list of books by weight, the Knowledge Store, the design of libraries, Architect David Adjaye, reading places, and reading. The need for screen reading changes the way that houses or public spaces are used. Neville Brody. Derek Birdsall Typographers. The technology for the recognition of objects on misaligned grids – Lev Malevich – alghorthmic typesetting of books and of course Umberto Eco.
Other ideas
Documentation - we will create a CD ROM of digital assets for people to make something
Different book forms – Nightkitchen, Saladbowl, Blog
Applications to AHRB, Arts Council, Design for the Twentieth Century, ACE for funding.
