Readings


The Death and Afterlife of Print

1.8 "In Defense of the Book", William Gass
1.15 "The Death of Paper", Allesandro Ludovico
1.22 "Print on Demand", Allesandro Ludovico

Technological Determinations

1.29 "The Medium is the Message", Marshall McLuhan

McLuhan writes
Just before an airplane breaks the sound barrier, sound waves become visible on the wings of the plane. The sudden visibility of sound just as it ends is an apt instance of the great pattern of being that reveals new and opposite forms just as the earlier forms reach their peak performance.
Think through this metaphor in relation to technologies of writing and publishing. In what sense might we say that the medium of print becomes visible just at the moment it is “superceded” by the internet?


What is a Digital Book?

2.5 "Post-Artifact Books and Publishing", Craig Mod

This text is a great introduction to the next section of our course. Read it. It's also itself an instructive example of the post-artifactual publishing it argues for. In your response, discuss one or two features of the future book, according to Mod, which you find most intriguing or problematic.

Historical Interlude

2.12 "Theses on the Philosophy of History", Walter Benjamin

Property Problems

2.19 "Print and Pixel: the Digital Future of Publishing", Nancy Levinson
3.5–12 "What is the Social in Social Media", Geert Lovink

3.12–3.19 "Interface, Access, Loss", Sean Dockray, pp 183–195 of Undoing Property

Archives

3.19–4.2 "After the Flood", James Gleick

Read as much as you can of this wide-ranging reflection on real and imagined libraries.
In your response, either (A) pick a particular historical event or philosophical theory which Gleck references (the library of Alexandria, Charles Babbage's computational theory, etc), and write about its relevance to the expanded sense of publishing we've been pursuing in our class;
or (B) write about how Wikipedia is both similar to, and different from, traditional print-based libraries.

4.2–4.9 "The Artful Accidents of Google Books", Kenneth Goldsmith

4.9–4.16 "Scan This Book!", Kevin Kelly



Autonomous Practices
"Socialism: A Life-cycle", Regis Debray

"Content Economies", Daniel van der Velden; "The Future of the Book", Richard Hollis

"From 0 to 1", David Reinfurt & Rob Giampetro

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