[-empyre-] printed matter & hart ware

[Johannes Birringer]

thanks for the link to the "new movement " video on book, Domenico
- very enjoyable performance!, and of course I would agree with what you
said in your reply.

I was less interested in worrying about oppositions and the old and the new, though being older i think i see interesting juxtapositions between old and young; my real concern is maybe about some not yet fully addressed economic or political developments (Micha did try to address them here) all surrounding us,  that tend to enforce or gradually impose the phasing out or the presumed obsolescence of certain older modes of relating to the "new movement" (book) and knowledge productions and hybridizations and self-publishings;  whether it's the shutting down of neighborhood stores, or libraries discontinuing journal subscriptions or new media carriers (platforms), say a DVD?, an SVHS tape?  becoming unplayable and then the issues gets clouded;  people call me to ask whether I have big data for new research. I don't have big data, or have not yet gotten round to worry about that.

regard
Johannes 

[Domenico schreibt]

we have always this bad habit to see "old" and "new" technologies as oppositional, and to wonder whether the new will kill the old or not. If it does, it's a success; if it doesn't, it's a failure.
But it doesn't work this way most of the times actually. And it won't work this way with books. "Book" (as addressed by this clever Spanish fake commercial: http://youtu.be/YhcPX1wVp38) is such a good technology, perfected along centuries to perfectly adapt the needs of the digital age - it won't never become obsolete. My studio is filled up of an ever increasing amount of paper even if I have hundreds of ebooks on my kindle; I would even say that my book collector mania is nurtured and enforced by the access I have to a vaster amount of information.
But we - as readers - need also something else. We need fast access and searchability; we need portability; we need hyperlinks. As producers, we need access to distribution and to the tools of production. As humans, we need to waste less trees, and we need less trucks on the streets...
So, let's keep doing books; but why shouldn't we do e-books?