the beauty and ugliness of 'things'

reification of media technologies and some of its effects

Reification

• is it possible to think of any technology without reification?

• "The Internet technology"

• reification and technological determinism

"The Internet Technology"

• The Internet layers (Lawrence Lessig)– physical layer

• network infrastructure• end-points – hardware

– logical layer - code– protocols– content layer

Legacy network infrastructure• built around the Cold War logic concepts of

network efficiency and reliability• based on a legacy infrastructure, hence it

works how it works• POTs (Plain Old Telephones)• how to tackle the end-mile problem?• hence, network infrastructure is (partially –

conceptually) built around the capabilities of the legacy infrastructure

• the legacy infrastructure is what it is because of telephones work how they work

POT infrastructure• telephones and telephone infrastructure work how they work because human voice sound

frequencies and electrical current behave how they behave

• AND because the original inventors and infrastructure entrepreneurs had monopolizing ambitions, hence they opposed standardization

• AND because these monopolizing efforts failed at an early stage, creating a colorful mosaic of incompatible technologies,

• AND because these efforts were successful later, resulting in a standard which had to be back-compatible with the existing networks, thus hugely reducing its technical potentials (YET – creating a model for the future logic of the Internet infrastructure!)

• AND because the resulting monopoly was nearly a sole one-to-one telephone-based communication researcher of the country

• AND because this monopoly was challenged by the American federal administration,

• AND because the monopoly resisted competition

• AND because …

End-point hardware

• computers work how they work because of the designed early uses of the computers (military)

• computers work how they work because of the scientific – mathematical – input AND because of the inventions in electronics AND because of the channeled research effort AND because of the existing research tradition AND …

Code

• code works how it works because infrastructure is what it is, and because end-point hardware works how it works

• it respects the limitations of the legacy infrstructure, making back-compatibility central to its logic

• this limitation is, in fact, the network's greatest potential

• 'keep the intelligence outside of the network' – make a simple network and keep the intelligence at end-points (this was vastly reduced with the introduction of 'servers' architecture, yet, on the other hand, servers are also end-points, the network itself remains 'stupid'

Gutenberg Bible

• 1,272 pages; with 4 pages per folio-sheet, 318 sheets of paper are required per copy. The 45 copies printed on vellum required 11,130 sheets. The 135 copies on paper required 49,290 sheets of paper. The handmade paper used by Gutenberg was of fine quality and was imported from Italy. Each sheet contains a watermark which may be seen when the paper is held up to the light, left by the papermold.

• British Library's two copies of the Gutenberg Bible

Effects of the Printing Revolution

• decreasing cost of access to knowledge = accessibility

• literacy revolution

• democratization of knowledge

• massive social shifts

Johann Gutenberg and his Work of the Books (Das Werk der Bücher)• printing technology

– movable type– printing press– ink– paper and vellum– business model

• rubrications, illuminations, bounding

Movable type

• movable type alloy

• 290 master characters needed for the Gutenberg Bible

• approx. 15600 types needed for one sheet (six pages per 2600 characters each)

Distribution and accessibility• around 1439 the printing press

is invented• printing of the Bible started

around 1450• first Bibles were available in

1454 or 1455• probably 135 paper Bible and

40 vellum Bibles were produced• price

– vellum copies – 50 – 75 sheep– paper copies – approx. 3 year

salary of a church clergyman • probably only one copy owned

privately in 15th century

The Gutenberg Revolution – The Gutenberg Myth• "The modern world commences with the printing press." (Charles Babbage)

• Printing technology put "more information into the hands of more people in less time at a lower costs and thereby spread literaty and learning more rapidly than ever beore" (McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology)

• "By 1500 … the printed book had become a new force. The momentous effect, of course, was that the world of learning, hitherto the domain of a tiny privilieged elite, was suddenly made much more accessible to the common man." (Derek de Solla Price)

• approx. 30.000 editions printed in 50 years after the advent of printing – approx. the same as through the previous 1.000 years

• by 1650 – printing was a 'fact of life'

The Gutenberg Revolution – The Gutenberg Myth• revolutions – dramatically new paradigms• printing – conservative use of new techniques to create manuscripts

– new technology – old culture (hence – printing's success…)– this continued for at least two centuries

• logical medium: literacy– 1500s – illiteracy well above 90% in Europe (yet it was practically universal illiteracy, since

those who could read and write belonged to the Church elite– by 1650 – no universal effect of printing upon literacy – approx. 80%; printing is a fact of life

– reading and writing – is not.– by 1700 – 65 – 70% (reading becomes a part of the job – trading)

• physical medium: paper– 1666 – anEnglish law decrees that the dead can only be buried in wool clothes (why?)– recycling – collecting of rags obligatory in England and America– mummies– 1860 – wood pulp paper enters the market – outbreak of popular culture (newspaper praices

fall by tenfold between 1860s and 1890s– steam power to operate printing presses– linotype– education: 1850 – 50% of European population illiterate. 1900 – illiteracy under 10%

The future of the book?

• Amazon Kindle– an amazing and vastly surprising market success

• iPad• electronic paper – still a remote possibility

Advantages of new book formats

• portability

• accessibility (?)

• flexibility of use, search capabilities

• publication costs

Limitations of new book formats

• they are just not 'books' – flexibiity, tangibility

• how about fair use issues? ? ?

• how about the price? ? ?

Book – what kind of a deal we get for the price?• tangible, physical object in an optimized format• takes up valuable space• price established basing on the format, market

position (segment), • fair use rights

– private use not limited– lending– borrowing– reselling / second hand market buying options

• copyright limitations– a form of license

Electronic book – what kind of a deal we get for the price?• device required – and with it – a new type

of competence• electronic book - a 'data object' – a file• fair use rights – heavily limited

– no lending– no borrowing– no communal experience– no reselling / no second-hand market

• copyright limitations – heavily intensified

• The digital era has provided the opportunity for publishers of all stripes the opportunity to make their content useful in a myriad of contexts that may have nothing to do with their traditional production and distribution channels and which can be immensely profitable - but only if they are willing to learn how to make the monetization of context more important than the monetization of distribution.Link: http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2007/02/01/online_book_publishing_issues_and.htm#ixzz0mgVC2Uz0

• disintermediation, shifting distribution, the need to develop technology expertise,

• "That is a very thorny problem", said Sargent. In the past, getting a book from libraries has had a tremendous amount of friction. You have to go to the library, maybe the book has been checked out and you have to come back another time. If it's a popular book, maybe it gets lent ten times, there's a lot of wear and tear, and the library will then put in a reorder. With ebooks, you sit on your couch in your living room and go to the library website, see if the library has it, maybe you check libraries in three other states. You get the book, read it, return it and get another, all without paying a thing. "It's like Netflix, but you don't pay for it. How is that a good model for us?"

• "If there's a model where the publisher gets a piece of the action every time the book is borrowed, that's an interesting model."

• fee-per-circulation

• On the other side, the models preferred by libraries are not necessarily going to work for publishers. While the subscription model will probably work for academic institutions, it would turn public libraries into unnecessary intermediaries. The "perpetual access" model would be suicide for publishers if applied to their most profitable top-line books.

Now is the time for publishers and libraries to sit down together and develop new models for working together in the ebook economy. Executives like John Sargent are not afraid of change, but they need to better understand the ways that they can benefit from working with libraries on ebook business models. Libraries need to recognize the need for change and work with publishers to build mutually beneficial business models that don't pretend that ebooks are the same as print.