Out of the very wide range of diverse issues discussed in the second ‘real’ symposium style lecture, two stood out to me: the idea of published work only being validated once it is viewed by others, and the ‘death’ of the physical book.
The question the interested me was: “Is the work we publish online only validated once it is viewed/consumed by others?”. I completely agree with how a lot of the lecturers answers this one, mainly that it is the fact that our writing has a possible audience that has an influence on the writing process, rather than if people actually read it. The fact that I’m writing this with the real possibility of at least one person seeing it means that I’m writing it in a different way than if I was just jotting down my thoughts on the lecture in a personal diary.
We know that the work we publish online is viewable to anyone, and this alters the way we write and the content of what we write. I don’t think people need to actually consume the work for it to be validated, the very fact that we published it means that it’s validated, at least to us.
I also liked the physical analogy, in that blogs technically don’t exist until someone clicks on it, and chooses to view it, and as Adrian said, if we write for an imagined audience, and write well, that imagined audience will become real.
I also found the discussion on the physical book vs e-reader a very relevant one. I’m one of those people that may not ever get used to reading for pleasure on a tablet or the like. I find it weird to read and annoying to not get the satisfication of turning the page, or checking to see how far you’ve come.
In contrast to this however, in the very near future I see none of my university books being physical copies. Even right now, only one of my four subjects as an actual textbooks, all the rest are online, and this makes every single aspect of this easier and more efficient.
Physical books still have a place close to my heart, but not in terms of my studies.
[…] Denham has notes on symposium 0.3 and also on books and the pleasure of the physicality. If only to know where you’re up to. However, an ereader like Marvin, for example has a very elegant interface element that automatically visualises where you are in the book, including where the current chapter is, where you are in the chapter, and how big the chapter is relation to the whole book. Even a print book can’t do this so elegantly. Brittany has some takeaways from the symposium too, picking up how books need to become beautiful things that provide very specific experiences to matter now. Lauren has another excellent summary, and yes Lauren, ‘automagically’ is a word we use in this space. Sophie also has notes, and loves books and her e-reader (me too, personally, and I’m serious, if you love what books do, rather than what they are as things, then how could you not enjoy some of the qualities digitisation brings?). And now I bring down the count to below 300 with Christopher thinking also about books, their physicality and the digital. For the fetishists out there, it was, oh, about five years ago when people still insisted that digital video would not replace film in high end production, or projection in cinemas. That argument is now over. Don’t even mention photography (because most of us aren’t professional photographers and are happy with our phones’ cameras, yet to a photographer this is a shocking as us as wannabe tv makers thinking using your phone for video is OK – personally I do – and so it is with books, we’re humanities people, books are our thing, but it doesn’t follow that it is everyone else’s, or that it will stay this way). Written by adrianmiles Posted in commentary Tagged with unlecture, weavings […]