The printed book in a digital society: Critical review

The printed book in a digital society Jose Luis Acevedo January 2016 M.A Design. ARTM035-AUT-1516: 15/16 Design Issues & Visual Communication University of Northampton

Abstract Every day around the world there is a new advance in science, engineering, medicine, computers, and so on all this novelties had affected society on a deep way, we have migrated into a new place where the digital world is a powerful force that domain the world, all previous technologies are migrating into a new path in which everything is connected. the books as previous dominant media have been influenced by this change nevertheless the printed form of the book need to confront that the electronic devices have been replacing the physical object, leading new theories about their future.

As designer, the analysis of the visual environment is crucial, We must understand the constant changes that the society is facing, this non-stoppable advance modifies the interpretation and the significance of the objects, all the easiness ways in which we can access information create a new vision of the world where every human been with a basic knowledge of computers can discover millions of data and information that can be used in lots of contexts from simple as getting a recipe to a difficult task as obtain a degree on any area of knowledge, nevertheless, all this is taking us into a divergent path.

The computers as media have lead to the end of various previous sources of information by merging all this elements into his vast net that touch every part of the whole society, still there are elements that oppose this powerful force, The book as media and source of information has interacted in our evolution, the creation of a way to communicate with written words modify our brain in an extreme way a great percent of the information that we process every day are collected by our eyes1. Was the early prototype of the book, the clay tablet used by the Sumerians established a new path in our evolution, in the begging just for archive information about business and other information related to the daily life however this ancient civilization realizes the importance of having an artefact that engrave the information and more important that the data that is written could not be altered and can be transmitted without modification, the oral tradition as a source of information can be transformed based on what the person speaking is aiming when he is passing on the information. This important milestone drive a revolution, not just on early civilizations that based on the Sumerian invention create new devices that fulfil the important task of storage information in order to be preserved to the future. But seeing the written word and his principal device the book as main source of knowledge and media artefact.

The basic function of the book keeps information that later is transmitted to the person who is interest on it, however, this relation between source message and the receiver has a deep meaning and the book as a transmitter of the message needs to create a deep interconnection with the receiver. that is why monks on medieval times created beautiful pieces of art just to transmit the information about his god, this task before the creation of the imprint before the creation of the printing press can take years to complete, many times the task was started by a person succeeded another and so successively until the job was done. Is maybe this transition between something with a deep meaning as the crafted version of the book to the overcrowding and loss of essence on the electronic book that It is leading to controversy and theorizing of the future of the book. Even creating a stage of nostalgia as David Staley suggest as a.

If nostalgia refers to a kind of sentimental or wistful longing for what was, then a nostalgic vision of the future of the book is one that, despite technological and economic forces to the contrary, maintains printed books will never be replaced by the e-book because books are comfortable, emotionally satisfying objects, easy to take to the beach, resting familiarly in the hand. E-books will never proliferate because they lack the feel of printed books, and besides, “we have always read books,� so this view 2. goes. “Books are a cheap, simple, durable, transferable, and persistent technology.

The cultural controversy on how technology is modifying our habits experiences and all lives is not a trendy topic of the XXI century since The industrialization we realize a compare how machinery and technological advance interfere and modify our behaviour the way as our brain is reading is again been modified. all this as well is an important factor to be added to the controversy on the future of the book, Nicholas Negroponte has been involved on technological advances that changed the interaction with the objects on 1984 he theorized the development of the actual Tablet and how this device would alter the dynamic of reading3., the actual tablets based on the predictions of Negroponte has displaced the printed form of the book, since the creation of the E-Reader the sales of printed books have falling down according to the guardian that in 2015 publish and article on how the electronic devices has been increasing the demand, there are a lot of reasons for readers to integrate the new technology, however, one of the main reason is storage the capacity of acquiring an extensive amount of books and information in a small device is really attractive for story lovers for example that now have the possibility of creating a huge collection of his favourite authors without the necessity of thrown finished books to create more space for the new acquisitions.

There as well lots of advantage in terms of updates, connectivity, and multimedia. That encourage to authors to be more creative with their stories. In all conversations with book authors, librarians, and publishers tend to illustrate the fact that now with technological features the author not just can be more in touch with the readers through forums blogs and social media but the interesting way on how many authors are using technology in order to change the narrative of their histories are very interesting. all this new authors are as well driven by the fact that the internet has allowed them write without necessity of print that reduces cost of production and intervention of publishers, so now more than ever are

spread in the world wide Web millions of texts not just histories, and fictional texts there is also a massive quantity of academic research and informative articles.

But electronic discourse promises to disrupt this process. In the first place it sharply increases the proportion of writers to readers. (We might paraphrase Benjamin by saying that "today there is hardly a gainfully employed European or American who has not published somewhere or other comments on his work, grievances, documentary reports, or that sort of thing" — provided we make access to a computer and modem a precondition to "gainful employment.") The increase in the number of documents that any reader has to sort through is for this reason genuinely unprecedented. It could be argued, of course, that the difficulty is partially offset by an increased ease of access that 5. makes it possible for readers to look at many more documents than previously.

In actual times is very difficult to find spaces where technology has not conquered the place one of this points is libraries that also has been affected by the digital age, in many of this spaces there is internet connection that allow the users to access not just to the library catalogue but many E-books. In the research made by Kathryn Zickuhr, Lee Rainie, and Kristen Purcell6. Shows how the American population access to the electronic services that the library offers this in terms of connectivity and EBooks is really important for the users and this increases the interest of the people who frequent libraries. We can realize the change that technology is making not just to society but to the places and objects that interact with that society, the book is no stranger to this change, still the printed version of the book has a lot to give even new technologies as E-ink can give a new perspective on the evolution of the book rather than the tablet and the E-readers. The love for the print as well can enhance his power by the use of technology the internet and social media are creating those spaces to people with same interested to get reunited and share the passion for books.

As conclusion, the printed form of the book will not disappear at least on the near future if well it will be intervened and modified by electronic and digital features still we tend to read on the same way as we used to read on the clay tablet our brain is just going through the new developments that technology is creating all this technical advances has a linear form of lecture by that we understand that still there is a long way to walk in order to develop other medium of gathering the information. nonetheless, there are people who are working on new developments in place of change the traditional way as we received the information, at the same time the book as well has modified his principal function by becoming and art piece designers, artist, and book lovers intervened the book to keep the essence that has all the printed form that evokes not only visually but with the use of other senses this to give a balance to a world overcrowding by electronics articles and digital information.

REFERENCES

1. McLuhan Marshall. (1962) The Gutenberg galaxy, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Pp.45 2. Staley David J (2012) Scenarios for the future of the book. [n.k.] Association of college & research libraries. Pp. 2-9.

3. Negroponte Nicholas. (1984) Nicholas Negroponte: 5 prediction form 1984 [online][s.l] Ted Talks.

Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_negroponte_in_1984_makes_5_predictions#t1360881 [Accessed : 10 January 2015] 4. Flood, Alison (2015) Sales of printed books fall by more than ÂŁ150m in five years. [s.l]The Guardian [online] Web site available at: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/13/sales-printedbooks-fell-150m--five-years [Accessed 15 December 2015].

5. Nunberg, Geoffrey (1996) Farewell to the information age. in: The future of the book . ed. (Belgium) Brepols.

6. Zickuhr, K. Rainie, L. Purcell, K. (2013). Library services on the digital era.[online] [s.l.] Pew research center

Web site available at: http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2013/01/22/library-services/ [Accessed 12 January 2016]