"Introduction" by Geoffrey Nunberg: or "Nobody is ever going to sit down and read a novel on a twitchy little screen. Ever."
The following is quoted directly from Nunberg's interview as excerpted at www.thesite.com
 

Geoffrey Nunberg:    If by book, we mean this kind of object, a thing with covers and pages and so on, then I think we could say one of two things. Most of the documents that are now printed in this form will be in electronic form within a few years. But most of the documents that are printed in this form really have no cultural interest. They're parts catalogs, they're phone directories, or maybe they're encyclopedias and other things that work better on electronic media. At the same time, the kinds of documents that have done the cultural heavy lifting, at least some of them, biographies, and criticism, and novels and works like that will continue to live at least a very important part of their lives in this printed paper. Or maybe they won't be printed centrally and distributed. Maybe they'll be distributed in electronic form and printed at local printers, at your bookstore, at your library on an as-needed basis. But printed books they will be, and they'll continue to do an important piece of cultural work alongside of all the new forms and new genres that are emerging in the electronic world. So what I think we can look for is, is a kind of, not just a balance, but an interesting interaction and symbiosis between these two kinds of media that'll make the world a more interesting place.

Here Nunberg sets up the discussion of the future of the book as culturally situated within technological determinism, or the bibliophiles versus the technology enthusiasts. In the introduction Nunberg follows the traditional editorial style (commentary and excerpts from each essay) that introduces each of the essays in the text. Clearly the unifying element within these texts is the critical exploration of the cultural issues surrounding the future of the book, for Nunberg says, "... most of the essays in this book fall in a long tradition of critical meditations on the cultural effects of new forms and new media..." (15). Here Nunberg chooses not to limit the discussion of the future of the book to technological determinism, rather he would like to believe that "when everything is possible, nothing is forgone." (20).

"Books in Time" by Carla Hesse:
1.    Introduction: The medium is not the mode
Hesse strongly believes that "the historical record makes unquestionably clear that the most distinctive features of what we have come to refer to as 'print culture' -- that is, the stabilization of written culture into a cannon of authored texts, the notion of the author as creator, the book as property, and the reader as an elective public-- were not inevitable historical consequences of the invention of printing during the Renaissance, but, rather cumulative results of particular social and political choices made by given societies at given moments" (21).

2.    A brief genealogy of the modern literary system
Hesse explores the history of our modern literary system. She notes that "it was not until the eighteenth century that the author was recognized as a legal entity" (22). She goes on to explore how some philosophers (John Locke) were wary to accept the book "as a source of knowledge" (23). Condorcet claims that "knowledge inheres in nature itself." Hesse claims that "a central strand of Enlightenment thought had already condemned the book as an archaic and inefficient cultural form" (23).  Hesse suggests that Condorcet foreshadows the dawning of the age of hypertext when he establishes the concept that the best way to spread knowledge "... was through authorless and open-ended texts, circulating freely between all citizens..." (24). Hesse seemingly advocates some form of censorship for today's technology (see page 28 for her detailed discussion), which leads nicely to her theory for "The remaking of the literary system in the electronic age. "

3.    The remaking of the literary system in the electronic age
Hesse argues that we are not so much in the middle of a technological revolution as we are in the midst of "the public reinvention of intellectual community" (29). To her "Knowledge is no longer that which is contained in space, but that which passes through it, like a series of vectors, each having a direction and duration yet without precise location or limit" (31). Hesse does not call for the elimination of the book. Rather she sees the advent of the new technologies as calling for newer ways in which to exist, for to Hesse "Digitalization, rather, has created a new terrain upon which the literary system will now operate..." (32), and hence requires some more of regulation or moderation.

"The pragmatics of the new: Trithemius, McLuhan, Cassiodorus" by James J. O’Donnell
O'Donnell takes a seemingly historical approach in his analysis of the future of the written word. He begins by examining how "... Latin Christians...were now using the written word with sophistication to organize and control their world" (38). Their power came not from their ability to read, but from their ability to control and manipulate the "authoritative texts." He sees the advent of print as constitutive of significant "social and cultural changes." However he takes an unusual twist when he asks the culturally significant question, "...who didn't like the technology of print, and why didn't they like it?" (40). Why "were people having printed books copied by hand?" 

Next O'Donnell jumps (perhaps he needs a hyper link here, so that I can better make the connection) ahead few centuries to discuss the "prophetic" role of Marshall McLuhan. While he discusses the role of a prophet, he really never says anything definitive or concrete about McLuhan, and I'm still left wondering what did McLuhan prophetize?

Next we go back a few centuries to Cassiodorus. The lesson we can learn from him is as a "practitioner who innovated, failed, innovated again..." (52). He goes on to explain how the librarians of today are the real innovators in the "production, dissemination , and consumption of knowledge today..." (53). O'Donnell questions why we place so much value on the spoken word, and "try to give the frozen words of those who are dead and gone...control over our own experience of the lived here and now" (54). Finally he reminds us that "Books are only secondary bearers of culture."

"Material Matters: The past and the futurology of the book" by Paul Duguid
1.    Goodbye the book?
Here Duguid likens the staying power of the book to that of a hinge or pencil. While other technologies may in some cases replace them (i.e. sliding doors, or the typewriter), they "offer their own deep-rooted and resilient combination of technology and social process and continue to provide unrivaled signifying matter" (64). He suggests that "to offer serious alternatives to the book we need first to understand and even replicate aspects of its social and material complexity" (66).

2.    Supersession of the book
Here he illustrates how the idea that "The new, by implication, doesn't merely replace the old; it supersedes it" (68). In other words our new technologies aren't simply replicating the printed word, they are far better than the printed word as a mode of communication. Importantly Duguid also shows how this theory has worked against technological determinism as "the rapid, predatory supersession of both hardware and software is rendering recently created digital documents and archives inaccessible or unreadable" (71). Newer isn't always better. Continuing to develop new languages, new ways of seeing, or even "new organs" will not enable us to better understand or even better comprehend our world.

3.    Liberation technology
Duguid looks at the supposed liberatory role of technology. Again he argues against the dichotomies of technology as "panopticon or the beacon of liberty" (73). "The Electronic Frontier Foundation... brings many related ideas of liberty together, associating 'electronic' technologies with the frontier and the 'marketplace of ideas' and in so doing casting doubt on the preelectronic technologies like the book" (74). George Landow feels that we need to be free from the "tyrannical, univocal voice of the novel." Here he shows how the "desire for a technology to liberate information form technology is not far from the search for a weapon to end all weapons or the war to end all wars" (76).

4.    Material information
Duguid argues for the interdependent nature of information and technology. Therefore he concludes that books are a form of technology, and hence "a means of production" (79). "Books produce and are reciprocally produced by the system as a whole" (79). By trying to bring together the competing theories of the liberationists and the supersessionists, we entangle ourselves in a discussion that ignores the communicative role of technology (the book is included in this).

5.    Future concerns
"The popularity of hypermedia on the World Wide Web shows that much of the rhetoric of hypertext is quite inaccurate and ineffectual" (88). [This reminds me of our earlier discussion surrounding the prophet McLuhan.] Yet if we simply dismiss the old to glorify the new, we miss a vital opportunity to take a critical and questioning stance on the cultural values of both.

6.    Conclusion
We must not examine technology "in isolation but within its social-material and historical context." When we look at the book as a form of technology we are able to see that "despite its apparent simplicity, it has a great deal to tell us and will, for some time yet, be both a useful, practical tool and a resourceful precedent for designers of alternative technologies to go by" (89).

"Farewell to the information age" by Geoffrey Nunberg
1.    Introduction:    The world turned upside-down
While printed books will continue to exist "for the indefinite future," we must not under estimate the "effects of the new technologies" (103). Nunberg questions the assumption that the new technologies can make everyone an author. For who will hear us if everyone speaks at the same time? Finally Nunberg questions how we use the term "information" and what the word really means.

2.    The philolology of "information"
Since Nunberg is also the usage editor for the American Heritage Dictionary, it is no wonder that he looks to the OED for a definition of information. Here he finds that the OED's definition of information does not compare to the culture's over use of the word. Therefore the question becomes, "How is the impression of 'information' constituted out of certain practices of reading and the particular representations that support them?"

3.    The phenomenology of information
The advent of daily newspaper seems to have brought about the "commercialized conception of content where the 'news' becomes the prototype for information at large" (115). So "information" becomes an amalgamated term used to represent facts, statistics, opinions, and thoughts.

4.    The properties of information
Information is static and does not change regardless of the medium used to represent it.
Information is measurable.
Information may be broken down into sets or subsets.
Information as public property.
Information is objective and autonomous.

5.    The future of information
While the World Wide Web may appear to serve as a media to communicate information it does not allow for the "social and material boundaries that the informational mode of reading requires" (124).

6.    Information on the Web
"... we may want to think of these forms on the model of the news services and clearinghouses: not as static compendia but rather as dynamic interfaces to an open-ended discourse" (129).

7.    After Information
"...we should look to electronic discourse to provide a counter and complement to the informational forms of print-- a domain that privileges the personal, the private, and the subjective against the impersonal, the public, and the objective" (133).

So what does it all mean? What is the future of the book? Books serve as a public forum, and as Hesse explains in her essay, "the book is a slow form of exchange; it conceives public communication not as action, but rather as reflection upon action. Indeed, the book form serves precisely to defer action, to widen the temporal gap between thought and deed, to create a space for reflection and debate" (27). The book is here to stay, at least for a while....

Click here to read Lee Honeycutt's review of The Future of the Book , or click here to read/listen to an interview with Geoffrey Nunberg discussing the origins and makings of The Future of the Book.