So...what is a medium exactly? Suki, Jennifer, Laurie, Andrea and I all sat down to figure it out. A medium is a delivery mechanism for content. Different mediums mean a change in how that medium is delivered, and this is how I will illustrate that.
Mediums, from old to new.
1. Face to face. You heard about the fires in Australia by coming into direct contact with someone who experienced it, or who heard about it directly from someone else. This would probably be in short bits, because it's not easy to memorize chunks and chunks of information. Someone would likely get distorted (ever play the telephone game?)
2. Print. A headline would come out about the Australian fires and be printed in newspaper. Any retraction would be printed in a later paper somewhere in the back. In the first week, a lenghtly magazine article might appear, and maybe even an in-depth book a year or two later. All possibly containing pictures of the fires and the destruction they've caused. Focused on facts. Contacts of where to donate money would be made available.
3. TV. Interviews with victims, experts..anyone involved might be shown on tv. Maps, videos, commentary...television offers a quick and visually stimulating look at the situation, where interested parties could hear the words directly from the mouths of the victims and experts, likely hearing the emotion in their voice and seeing the emotion in their faces. Contacts of where to donate would be made available. Information is only visible to those who caught that particular news program.
4. Internet. Since both print and tv are available online, one can expect to get the story in both of those terms. In addition, commentary, in the form of text or youtube response, is an option. One can start a website to take in donations, make a direct desposit to an organization working to help victims. One might even be able to post directly on a memorial page to wish families the best. Incredibly interactive.
If the internet can do pretty much everything that the other mediums can do, what, if anything, will keep them around? Is there something intrinsic about a book that will safeguard it as a medium and keep it around for generations to come? I think that's a crazy question, one that I never would have asked growing up. But I think in today's techno temperature, it's a completely valid one. Thoughts? And remember, just because you like to curl up with a good book doesn't mean the next generation does. They might end up curling up with whatever the next Twilight is on their laptop...
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s we discussed mediums in class and in our small groups, a great deal of ideas came to mind. Some mediums entertain, inform and allow for interpersonal communication. There are also adaptive mediums that level the playing field for the hearing impaired, the visually impaired, second language learners and the like.
ReplyDeleteEven in the most remote places of the world, there are internet places that allow one to connect with their loved ones or receive the latest news for a fee. Isn't it awesome to to use the medium that allows you to see the person that you are communicating with?
Mediums allow us to make choices about what information we seek and how we interact with it. What's interesting about television or the theatre is that you can read a book and in a few months, if not sooner, a movie is produced. Another medium like my nephew's phone is armed with so many features, one that can locate the neighborhood registered sex offender(s).
Who knows what the future holds for the amount of information that are produced/created or manufactured and what medium will be used?
You might be right about the uncertain future of the book. Those kindles are getting cuter and cuter, and they hold so many books in such a small space!
ReplyDeleteI think the real challenge for any ebook platform, though, is going to be the DRM/intellectual property issues. All the books I own, I can read as often as I want, lend out, sell, donate, burn, throw in the ocean, whatever. But as I understand the kindle, at least, amazon keeps my books backed up on their servers. Can I lend "my" books? Or am I just licensing them for personal use, while amazon actually owns the content? Can I sell or donate them? My grandfather has a strict rule (which I try to follow as often as I can) that you don't give someone a book as a gift unless you've read it yourself (that way you can have a good conversation about the book with the recipient of the gift later). How is this going to work with an ebook? What happens to the doctrine of first sale? I think if there's going to be any major stumbling block for books in coming generations, it's going to be that they want to own the content and be allowed to use it.
As McLuhan said: "Take any books on any subject and custom-make your own book by simply xeroxing a chapter from this one, a chapter from that one--instant steal!" On that tip, I think that we may see some developments in print-on-demand, if publishers want to stay in business and get some use out of their old back catalogs.
I think your question on the future of the book is, indeed, a very valid one. Isn't the same question also asked to the future of library and librarian?
ReplyDeleteIf books become obsolete, Mr. Postman will be so devastated in heaven, and I 'personally' don't think it'll happen, though.
Although it is true that different media appear and disappear throughout our lives,I think books are more than just a medium, rather it (reading books) is a culture or activity. People love using internet, but I doubt how many of them really use internet for pure act of reading. People search information, find articles, news, play games, but they don't read in the internet. Of course, they read blogs and Facebook, Myspace, etc, but the purpose and nature of this kind of reading is completely different from that of book reading.
As I write this, it came to my mind that books as media and reading books as an activity can be a seperate topic for debate, but this is how I see it.
Is there something about the medium of print, or the book in particular, that make it important in some way that another medium cannot replace? As Fitzgerald implies, giving up books may not be the answer, but reconceptualizing what books mean might could be important to their survival.
ReplyDeleteIn my blog, I spoke of the human element and how it relates to technology. As I explained, humans have the need to connect with one another. Although a person can get information from the net or by downloading a book on various devices (Kindle) I do not believe we are ready to give-up the personal relationships that books enable us to have. When I purchase a book, I often lend that book out to a number of friends who, once they have completed the book, we have a conversation about it. To do this through Kindle, each of us would have to purchase the $300.00 device and the downloadable book. You are losing a personal way of connecting with your friends by doing this. But, Emily made a good point about future generations who are growing up in this new technology age. With more and more kids using email and text messaging as their way of socializing with their friends and family by the time they hit grade school, I cannot help but think that books will lose some of their importance.
ReplyDeleteI don't think there's something special about print *in of itself*, but there is something special about each kind of medium. I mean, there are still vinyl records. People still hold a lot of value in original pieces of artwork, whether they be paintings, the original storyboard for a comic book, etc, etc. To borrow a bit from Benjamin, these objects have an aura that technology only builds upon. Will real paper and ink books become less popular? Sure, especially if the prices of kindles go down. But people will always fetishize (not in a pejorative sense, necessarily) the actual material thing. There will always be people--even if eventually they are looked upon as throwbacks--that insist on having paper copies of stuff. There is room for both.
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