future of books

Vegetal and mineral memory - the future of books
Umberto Eco on varieties of literary and geographic memory (via fimoculous)

After having spent 12 hours at a computer console, my eyes are like two tennis balls, and I feel the need of sitting down comfortably in an armchair and reading a newspaper, or maybe a good poem. Therefore, I think that computers are diffusing a new form of literacy, but they are incapable of satisfying all the intellectual needs they are stimulating

There's an interesting discussion on the absence of authorship in popular collective art with jazz and Commedia dell'arte used as examples of free textuality. As well as the multiple/free authorship of commedia, boynton has often thought of its interactive element where audience could sometimes suggest, direct and even suddenly curtail proceedings.
According to Eco, such forays into free creativity will not signal the death of the author, rather a liberated coexistence.

There are books that we cannot re-write because their function is to teach us about necessity, and only if they are respected such as they are can they provide us with such wisdom. Their repressive lesson is indispensable for reaching a higher state of intellectual and moral freedom

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Comments: future of books

An amazing moment - at the same library where Ecco thpoke, a curator put up an exhibit of holy books. Sacred editions of the Koran and the Bible. For the Jewish religion, he put up the Protocol of the Elders of Zion. And defended it... he's taken it down now. Can't remember the reference but its been all over the place. I havent linked to it because i dont want to buy into a "prejudiced Islam" position. But its pretty incredible..
Posted by David at December 10, 2003 12:44 PM

The "Future of Books" sits across the library aisle from "The History of Computers".
Posted by Tony.T at December 11, 2003 11:34 AM

The bookends of modern civilisation as we thought we knew it ... or as that erudite post-modellist Elle MacFeeeers'n has put it far more pithily, "I would never judge a book by its cover that I hadn't written myself".
Posted by Sedgwick at December 11, 2003 11:52 AM