tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929346053949579231.post6288293818091603526..comments2024-03-11T02:10:31.396-04:00Comments on Sapping Attention: Second epistle to the intellectual historiansBenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04856020368342677253noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929346053949579231.post-54266735840748885992012-02-20T10:30:43.655-05:002012-02-20T10:30:43.655-05:00Hi LD!
Agreed that corporate e-books are a lousy ...Hi LD!<br /><br />Agreed that corporate e-books are a lousy deal. (Although it has its uses; before my Kindle shattered, I did use it to download travel guides, the New Yorker, and quick novels; things I usually throw out and don't mark up anyway). But again, most digital humanists are against them; and the real evangelism comes from the possibility of publishing in HTML5 or XML or Unicode, which are emphatically open standards free of corporate control.<br /><br />I'd also say this. Library books are another form of texts where users have only temporary, revocable rights, in which you can't make marginalia, in which a state/private entity gets to determine what knowledge you can access. But we celebrate libraries for expanding access to knowledge, and curse online texts for restricting manipulation. I think part of the reason for that is mystification.Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04856020368342677253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929346053949579231.post-87563421859958371682012-02-20T07:40:45.574-05:002012-02-20T07:40:45.574-05:00Ben, thanks for this thoughtful reading and new pe...Ben, thanks for this thoughtful reading and new perspective on my post. I am especially glad that you sifted through my verbiage and focused on the area that concerns me: the relationship of the reader to the text. <br /><br />The "loss of control," as you put it, is epistemically jarring. But my greater concern remains one of economics/class. This concern is obviously connected to the book as material object. All that labor instantiated in the (printed) book becomes the possession of its owner -- a real commodity in exchange for cash, which represents the labor of the buyer. In the case of digital texts marketed by corporations for proprietary reading devices, the wealth flows one way -- towards the corporation. The buyer has the use of the texts, not the possession of them.<br /><br />And, while I am always a little irked at the <i>radical</i> calls of digital humanists to lay aside the codex -- and I have heard these sophomoric pronouncements about how the best thing that could happen would be for the printing press to die -- what troubles me more is the extraordinary power corporations retain over the texts (virtually) placed in the reader's hands. <br /><br />This is, it seems to me, a New Thing in the history of the book. And it remains a troubling thing.<br /><br />I regret my infelicitous phrasing regarding the tools of production -- you are not the first reader of this post to infer that I was suggesting that print technology is somehow "easy" or "accessible." I meant to suggest only that a reader of a text can produce his/her own text in response, <i>right there on the page</i>, by writing in its margins, in a way that makes the reader's text equally permanent. <br /><br />Well, as permanent as ink and paper can be, which is -- sadly, to my mind -- not quite permanent enough.<br /><br />Thanks again for reading. I enjoyed your response very much.L.D. Burnetthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11030486794964584014noreply@blogger.com