Debray Review

In G. Nunberg (Ed.) (1996). The Future of the Book (pp. 139-151), Berkeley: U. of California Press.

1. p. 140--the book comes before "most" readers. "The material comes before the worker, it guides him, induces or molds him." A justification for attending carefully to the medium and not just to our own content (classroom/pedagogy, professional interests, administrative content). This is a counter arguement to Cindy and my suggestion that teachers always start with pedagogical concerns before becoming embroiled in techno-decision making. The book--"The weighty object rdains a weighty affectvity." So the digital will lead us inevitably in other directions. (Donna Reis has similar suggestions).
2. Manuscript and printing endeavors historically male following the church. He claims the book as "spirit made object" (142).
3. the book comes from clay tablets and becomes architectual in its grandure. A scaffolding for the holy to last forever.

4. P. 145 is the same old tired hypertext as open infinitely navigatable system, blah, blah, blah . . . it suggests a radical changing of elements that construct what we communicate.
Individual retrieval of the "alarming glut of traces" is now being made possible (for THOSE WITH THE MEANS). He has heard enough "paeans to the transversal, the rhizomatic, the deterritoriallized, to maps of immanence, the nomadic, the interactive, and so on . . . (146). I'd say that new technologies influence what we feel LESS compelled to take on. The freedom to take a step in another direction. He sees "the spiraling recurrence of the most ancient in the form of the most new. fax => volumen, audiovisual => secondary orality, word processing => facilitate the scholastic gloss, the late arrival of attributing works to authors is going by the wayside as it did ancient times.
5. "The world wide spread of codes that is a product of computerizaton is also a further estrandement of signs from the world" (147). "A comforting landmark dissapears. He wants to assume the we will end up with texts withno hard edges or shell, cirulating in a library without shelves or wals, between readers who no longer need libraries because they are directly connected to one another (or between telestudents without schools or teachers) and dweling, moreover, in netowks of Los Angeles like urban communities without monumnets or centers (pp. 147-148). These are either utopias or atopias. What are the implications?

No communities (148) without physical closure. or "The less a community's memory ends up being physical and territorial, the more it will be mental and scriptural" (149). The technologies that we come to depend on, that become invisible, allow us to attempt something else. So we need to ask ourselves where do we live? What do we depend on that allows us the luxury of the transgressions of our modern media? He suggests that where one liberates, another space is enclosed and similar "retrograde laws of progress". "Electronic immaterialism could then be the prellude to a dind of return to earth, word, and stone" (150).