[Web4lib] Gutenberg Parenthesis

[IsisInform at aol.com]

Thanks for sharing this article, Robert.  
 
In the opening to Section 2, the authors define clay tablets  as books.  If 
a clay tablet can be defined as a book, so can a  single web page.  
 
Rather than the object, a more instructive view is the  method.  It is the 
method of inscription that leads to cultural  change.  Here writing itself 
is the primary invention beginning with  handwritten communication (clay 
tablets through monastic bibles) and continuing  to printed and then to digital 
material.  
 
Prior to handwriting, communication was oral and therefore unrecorded, its  
audience limited to those within the sound of a voice.  Handwritten  
objects can be read more than once, so the invention of  writing added permanence 
and increased the  audience.  Printing allowed the production of identical 
written  objects, again increasing the audience.  The more there is  to read, 
the more there are people who want to read and to write.  So  printing also 
led to literacy and increased the audience and the  authors.  
 
Digital continues this process, increasing audience,  increasing authors, 
and adding  revisability.  We insert our own thoughts as easily as we  
delete.  More ephemeral than a clay tablet, the digital  medium sacrifices 
permanence for the ability to change  everything.  
 
 
Katherine  Bertolucci
Isis Information Services
_katherine at isisinform.com_ (mailto:katherine at isisinform.com)   
_www.isisinblog.typepad.com_ (http://www.isisinblog.typepad.com/) 
_www.isisinform.com_ (http://www.isisinform.com/)        

 
 
In a message dated 11/22/2010 10:04:21 AM US Mountain Standard Time,  
web4lib-request at webjunction.org writes:

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Message:  1
Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2010 13:34:07 -0500
From: "Robert L. Balliot"  <rballiot at oceanstatelibrarian.com>
Subject: [Web4lib] Gutenberg  Parenthesis
To: <publib at webjunction.org>,  <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Message-ID:  <E8A98BD04B5943B7BF0374CC1CCFAB1A at junior>
Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="us-ascii"

Excellent position paper on the culture of the  book:

Gutenberg  Parenthesis
<http://www.sdu.dk/Om_SDU/Institutter_centre/Ilkm/Forskning/Forskningsprojek
ter/Gutenberg_projekt/PositionPaper>  

Jeff Jarvis (author of What Would Google Do?) discusses this in  the
Huffington Post today in Who says our way is the right  way?
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-jarvis/who-says-our-way-is-the-r_b_78653
4.html>  

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Robert L.  Balliot
Skype: RBalliot
Bristol, Rhode  Island
http://oceanstatelibrarian.com/contact.htm
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