Re: Re: [-empyre-] C. S. Peirce and Code: book

[Christine Goldbeck <cgoldie@verizon.net>]

The bibliophile in me loves books for numerous reasons, ranging from tacility and mobility to design. The thinker in me loves hypertext and the conditions and objects its use enables in multiple communities.  The scholar in me worries about multiple technical and cultural issues involved in being digital. The human in me loves stories and will listen and tell them in whatever media seem the most fitting for the particular presentation.

Which all brings me back to code and semiotics. The book, the anti-book (as some like to call hyperfiction), the stage, the painting ... all require the use of an unspoken and, often, unwritten code between artist and audience. These codes, employing semiotics, are often based in Cartesian principles. Now, we're (new media artists) changing the rules -- the semiotics and codes -- by which we've been operating. 

If you accept this thinking, I want to ask you: what does this mean for publishing as an industry and for the writers (artists, scholars, etc ...) seeking publication? Will the stigma against so-called vanity publishing subside or be eradicated? Do readers even care whether a book is self-published or manufactured by big-name operations or is the blogosphere and other new mediums wherein we find virtual story changing these dynamics (codes, semiotics between interactors in an industry, a profession, the act of reading)?




>From: "Friedrich W. Block" <block@brueckner-kuehner.de>
>Date: Mon Oct 17 04:17:14 CDT 2005
>To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>Subject: Re: [-empyre-] C. S. Peirce and Code: book

>At 16:07 17.10.05 +1000, Adrian wrote:
>
>>or an anxiety for the book in the late age of print. the book is now a 
>>designed object, something expressing delight and wonderment, precisely 
>>because it is no longer sufficient to be merely a book (with its 
>>protestant black on white of a perfectly *functional* typography). This is 
>>the book as a fetish, like a nice pair of shoes...
>
>this is surely true for (printed) 'books after the book': the functions of 
>the book have changed as had handwriting in the Gutenberg-galaxy. 
>Fetishizing the book as an object is one economic strategy, managing 'pop 
>cults' (e.g. "Harry Potter") another one. However, I think that the book is 
>still a very handsome divice for storage and reading. I just read an 
>article about a new purpose for papyrus: storing information about nuclear 
>waste for the next centuries, because the experts feel to unsure with the 
>electronical storage of this information.
>
>best
>
>friedrich 
>
>_______________________________________________
>empyre forum
>empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>http://www.subtle.net/empyre