chris meade if:book new media futures

booklovers are in denial

they like to think they live in a book-lined world.

actually even the bookiest read mostly in bed,on the toilet, on the bus

books have been kicked out of the front room and sent up to bed

meanwhile even my mum is multimedia

e-readers are boring

but they prove that books are an

experience that happen in our heads,

the book a souvenir of our visit

a book is…

a symbol of freedom

a container of culture

a conversation

a bounded entity

a constantly changing

form - from papyrus to

codex to paperback

and beyond

book groups

think they’re defending free

reading against the screen

but have turned books into

experiences that take a month

and end in a meal

what matters?

• sole authorship sometimes• freedom of expression• playfulness• reader writer relationship• range of possibilities• depth of engagement• “switching off and curling up with…”

compelling content

seeking out the harry potter, sergeant pepper, ulysses, persuasion, the wire

of transliterature

imagination & digitisation

“Blake was always using new technologies, often abusing technologies, not for the sake of an interest in the technology per se, but what he could use it for. He believed that, rather like learning a language… if you speak a different language maybe you ask different questions. And the language of the digital age is one that Blake would have pursued.”

- Tim Heath, Blake Society

if:book’s fictional stimulus

& the motfothotbook

• www.songsofimaginationanddigitisation.net

• www.thegoldennotebook.org

• www.futureofthebook.org.uk/jacob/readernew.html

• www.futureofthebook.org.uk/tim/book.html

if:book

www.futureofthebook.org.uk