Library Journal
In his introduction to The Future of the Book, editor Nunberg (linguistics, Stanford Univ.) says there has been extremism among both technology lovers and haters. "Ultimately," he writes, "the technologies cannot themselves determine how or where they will be deployed. This is left for us to decide." This work consists of 11 scholarly papers by mostly academics presented at a recent conference. Contributors include Nunberg, Carla Hesse, James O'Donnell, Paul Duguid, Nunberg, Regis Debray, and Patrick Brazin. The presenters take a variety of approaches to the ways, rates, and degrees to which the computer might kill the book., e.g., historical, philosophical, and inguistic. No author rejects computers or sees their takeover as complete and immediate. An index is needed. Of primary interest to academic libraries.
The Future of the Book
by Geoffrey Nunberg
The death of the book has been duly announced, and with it the end of brick-and-mortar libraries, traditional publishers, linear narrative, authorship, and disciplinarity, along with the emergence of a more equitable discursive order. These essays suggest that it won't be that simple. The digitization of discourse will not be effected without some wrenching social…
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Overview
The death of the book has been duly announced, and with it the end of brick-and-mortar libraries, traditional publishers, linear narrative, authorship, and disciplinarity, along with the emergence of a more equitable discursive order. These essays suggest that it won't be that simple. The digitization of discourse will not be effected without some wrenching social and cultural dislocations.
The contributors to this volume are enthusiastic about the possibilities created by digital technologies, instruments that many of them have played a role in developing and deploying. But they also see the new media raising serious critical issues that force us to reexamine basic notions about rhetoric, reading, and the nature of discourse itself.
Editorial Reviews
Booknews
A dozen essays from a July 1994 conference at the University of San
Marino argue that a total shift to electronic information media would
trigger wrenching social and cultural dislocations. Among their
perspectives are the pragmatics of the new, farewell to the
information age, toward meta-reading, hypertext and authorship, and
the body of the text. They avoid the usual fetish arguments such as
curling up in bed or leather bindings and pipes. Novelist Umberto Eco
provides an afterward. No index or word search.
Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
Product Details
- ISBN-13:
- 9780520204508
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- Publication date:
- 12/19/1996
- Pages:
- 250
- Product dimensions:
- 6.48(w) x 9.59(h) x 1.04(d)
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