This is the long-time-coming moment of a near total transformation of the distribution of news, information, entertainment and education. What we know of as books.
The book becomes virtual, fluid, a platonic ideal of book with the infinite perfection of its aspiration and immateriality. Weightless, portable; the contents commentable.
Now the book comes unbound, deconstructed (and reconstructed instantly over millions of criss-cross strands around the earth) Content is number sequences on ibooks, the Gutenberg Library and the myriad of libraries posting their holdings in the public domain, all now easily accessible on more and more gizmos.
How it will play out, with old infrastructures breaking down - bookstores disappearing - publishers wondering what they will do when their authors go direct on their own websites or to the likes of Amazon. Price point seems a petty issue with the entire future so uncertain but it seems likely that the big operators, Amazon, Apple and Google, will be even bigger; they will distribute everything - every e-thing.
Why I am so exhilarated by all this - other than awe at the vastness of the future? I believe that in the long run this will be a huge boost for education, civilization and humanity -- instant global access to all ‘the greats’ and ‘up-to-dates’. Let the great skimming begin.
“Gradually... and then suddenly.”
Gradually and then now.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Thursday, April 1, 2010
book hunger
Reading the reviews of David Shield’s much touted and discussed new book ‘Reality Hunger’ I’m sadly reminded that now that Duthie’s is gone and my rare priviledged life of free and current books over, I will have to ‘buy’ it in book form or download it or wait for the library to get it.
Checking out prices in the enemy camps, it’s new at Chapters - $19.10, ebook $17.39, at Amazon $16.47 US kindle edition $11.99 US and even used for $14.37 I go to David Shield's home page (http://www.davidshields.com) and read all the reviews and free excepts and watch the you tubes of his talks. I want the book even more now. I read that he likes my favourite author of the moment, Geoff Dyer, and a past favourite - Roland Barthes. He writes in snappy aphorisms - a manifesto for a new artistic movement , a manifesto for movement, meaning and affirmation in art. I really want to read this book!
“An artistic movement, albeit an organic and-as-yet unstated one, is forming. What are its key components? A deliberate unartiness: “raw” material, seemingly unprocessed, unfiltered, uncensored, and unprofessional. (What, in the last half century, has been more influential than Abraham Zapruder’s Super-8 film of the Kennedy assassination?) Randomness, openness to accident and serendipity, spontaneity; artistic risk, emotional urgency and intensity, reader/viewer participation; an overly literal tone, as if a reporter were viewing a strange culture; plasticity of form, pointillism; criticism as autobiography; self-reflexivity, self-ethnography, anthropological autobiography; a blurring (to the point of invisibility) of any distinction between fiction and nonfiction: the lure and blur of the real." from Reality Hunger by David Shields, published by Knopf, 2010
I consider writing to him at the contact page of his website to request a review copy. I assure him I will by all the means of media at my disposal promote his book, his ideas, his impressive far-ranging refernce bank and his clear and articulate style. This may be the theory that liberates us from deconstruction. Or is it just another but much more readable deconstruction? I will have to read it to find out. I might just have to buy it.
Checking out prices in the enemy camps, it’s new at Chapters - $19.10, ebook $17.39, at Amazon $16.47 US kindle edition $11.99 US and even used for $14.37 I go to David Shield's home page (http://www.davidshields.com) and read all the reviews and free excepts and watch the you tubes of his talks. I want the book even more now. I read that he likes my favourite author of the moment, Geoff Dyer, and a past favourite - Roland Barthes. He writes in snappy aphorisms - a manifesto for a new artistic movement , a manifesto for movement, meaning and affirmation in art. I really want to read this book!
“An artistic movement, albeit an organic and-as-yet unstated one, is forming. What are its key components? A deliberate unartiness: “raw” material, seemingly unprocessed, unfiltered, uncensored, and unprofessional. (What, in the last half century, has been more influential than Abraham Zapruder’s Super-8 film of the Kennedy assassination?) Randomness, openness to accident and serendipity, spontaneity; artistic risk, emotional urgency and intensity, reader/viewer participation; an overly literal tone, as if a reporter were viewing a strange culture; plasticity of form, pointillism; criticism as autobiography; self-reflexivity, self-ethnography, anthropological autobiography; a blurring (to the point of invisibility) of any distinction between fiction and nonfiction: the lure and blur of the real." from Reality Hunger by David Shields, published by Knopf, 2010
I consider writing to him at the contact page of his website to request a review copy. I assure him I will by all the means of media at my disposal promote his book, his ideas, his impressive far-ranging refernce bank and his clear and articulate style. This may be the theory that liberates us from deconstruction. Or is it just another but much more readable deconstruction? I will have to read it to find out. I might just have to buy it.
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