Remember Books?
16 May 2008 at 10:31 am Peter G. Klein 1 comment
| Peter Klein |
Before multimedia, blog entries, and PowerPoint, people expressed their ideas in books. Appreciating books requires a longer-than-average attention span, a love of the tactile (no Kindles, please!), and a comfy chair. Anyway, if you’re into that whole Retro thing, there’s an official conference series on the Book. The sixth annual meeting is coming up this fall. From the conference blurb:
In the context of today’s rapid developments in information technologies, the book is indeed an old medium of expression. Do the new media (the internet, multimedia texts and new delivery formats) represent a threat or an opportunity? What is the book’s future as a creature of and conduit for human creativity?
This Conference will address the provocative suggestion that, rather than being eclipsed by the new media, the book will thrive as a cultural and commercial artifact. More than this, the information architecture of the book, embodying as it does thousands of years’ experience with recorded knowledge, may well prove critical to the success of the new media.
These crazy bibliophiles even have their own journal!
Organizations and Markets 
1.
Rafe Champion | 17 May 2008 at 6:39 pm
“What if we give Pete a book for his birthday”
“No, he has got one already”.
Marshall McLuhan used to write books saying the end of the book is nigh, to be replaced by a gobal village of electronic communications.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan
He also said the content of communications didn’t matter, it was the feel of the thing. Looking at US political campaigning, I think he was onto something.
But people in the book trade say that more “units” are still being produced every year.
So don’t hesitate to get Pete a unit for his birthday, or Christmas.