Tick Tock

What happened to the last week plus? Life just gets in the way of writing. It's so discourteous that way. I have at least had one insight, unrelated to my topic (at least on first inspection). It seems that I'm in an abusive relationship with Mexican food-- it keeps beating me up but I keep going back to it "This time all will be well...."  I suppose we are all capable of self-delusion. Knowing when to get off the train is the challenge.

More on topic, I have joined Text and Academic Authors Association (http://www.taaonline.net/) . I wanted to see what they had on digital publishing/ebooks and so far I have seen a few bits but I was expecting them to be "abuzz" with conversation about that which is changing the pre-existing models of publication. I thought maybe it was just this group or I haven't yet learned to search their resources effectively, but a friend returned from ISTE (http://www.iste.org/welcome.aspx), having gone with the particular mission of finding out what others are doing with epub and she didn't see much either among the tech-oriented.

I'm still contemplating the nature of a "book." Length has been part of that definition but that seems superficial and at least partly grounded in publication/profit-margin expectations. What is the intellectual reason to bring information together in a larger collection, especially in an age of Google? It's easy to say "for deeper intellectual engagement" and maybe that is enough.

I've been thinking of this in juxtaposition with viewing Joe Kraus on "We're creating a culture of distraction" (May 25, 2012).

http://joekraus.com/were-creating-a-culture-of-distraction The bit I particularly liked was his notion of slow technology. One of his ideas is to think of how technology were to change if, instead of being designed for "productivity" at work (at its heart), it were designed for other goals, such as

• causing insight or
• imagination or
• humaneness or
• creativity or
• building real connections with people or
• even simply building a longer attention span or
• mindfulness,
• He envisions a technology that affirms boredom or reflection or pauses in life.

I think epubs may contribute to that, it may be a slow technology and that may also be why it isn't on the radar of "fast twitch" techies (to use Kraus' term). I'm put in mind of the turtle and the hare. The hare had an iPhone. The turtle carried a book (whatever that is).

Join me in the game. Pause a moment and pick one of those topics then critically analyze a tool you have used for how it advances that goal. Or envision what slow technology would you create? (How long before you turn away from the task?)

I think of "fire" which clearly helps us to gather together and spend time with one another in slow, potentially thoughtful ways. Yes, I think of Scrivener (you knew I'd mention that software) and how it helps me see the big picture, a distinct different style from softwares that are linear like Word.

Of course none of these will do us any good if we aren't willing or able to pause. And perhaps that brings me back to my beginning with either an insight or a rationalization....maybe time away from writing is part of pausing and incubation. Even if that pause is due to Mexican food. 

Warning: The Earth is About to Move

Okay, maybe not the earth, but any book about the earth. I've been reading "Electronic Text Editing" (ed by Burnard, O'Keefe, and Unsworth, 2006, Modern Language Association of America) trying to discern the essence of "book." 

Seems a book is really a database of some linear and other poorly sorted information (Buzzetti & McGann, "Critical editing in a digital horizon" p. 53-73)

There is
a) the content (an abstraction without form)

b) symbols that contribute to conveying the content (e.g., letters)

c) Markup language (e.g., punctuation but also html type such as  <title>, or more precisely DTD (document type definitions)). There’s a whole group called the Text Encoding Initiative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_Encoding_Initiative  that has come up with 500 plus textual  components. Thanks to Terry Elliott for this bit of information.

d) A knowledge representation scheme—a model for relating the content with the process (markup). I’m thinking they mean a print book or e-text.

Then, throw in the interpretation of the reader and the whole thing “shakes.” A book is a very unstable thing.

Are digital media strong enough to "contain all that a book is?" or perhaps they are the only container that can hold all the possibilities of a modern book--the options for searching, the way we may record or create DTD to add new levels to the experience of "book."

Is the markup part of the authoring of a book? or is it part of the societal context? There's a dual nature here, like that of light as both particle and wave.  A book stills in a moment of non-reading to be a particle, and then when interpreted, when read, shifts form into a series of processes impacting on the reader who impacts on it in a self-reflective cycle.

In related news, it seems our distant ancestors may have been creating animation on those cave walls: http://news.discovery.com/history/prehistoric-movies-120608.html watch the video.  Perhaps the shift of "transcribed work" has always been around.

"Media" comes from Latin for medius, the middle. Perhaps all media have always been in that tense place "in between."