What is it about?
This article challenges the view that in the future paper will be obsolete as the material of choice for making books, and that only digital books will be available. Even though digital gurus such as Nicholas Negroponte, who in 2010 said that physical books had five years of life left in them, assure us this is the case, this obsolescence will not fully happen because of certain qualities of the printed book that complement a reader’s psychological makeup.
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Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Image of the Book: Cognition and the Printed Page, Design Issues, July 2015, The MIT Press,
DOI: 10.1162/desi_a_00336.
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Resources
The Image of the Book (First page)
Article's page on Design Issues website (MIT Press). Article begins: "Is it possible that in another five hundred years, paper will be obsolete as the material of choice for making books, and that only digital books will be available? Even though digital gurus such as Nicholas Negroponte, who in 2010 said that physical books had five years of life left in them, assure us this is the case, perhaps this obsolescence will not fully happen because of certain qualities of the printed book that complement a reader’s psychological makeup." Design Issues is "the first American academic journal to examine design history, theory, and criticism. Design Issues provokes inquiry into the cultural and intellectual issues surrounding design."
The Image of the Book
An early version of the article was presented at the Resurrecting the Book conference in Birmingham, U.K. on Sat. Nov. 16, 2013. The recorded audio of the presentation was later paired with the slides to form this video. The article went through many revisions before publication in 2015. In comparing physical books to digital books, the one characteristic that cannot be replicated in digital is the physical presence of the "book book" and the physical interaction between object and user. Other factors play a part as discussed in the article, but physical space cannot be duplicated in digital.
The Landscape of the Physical Book: Space and Memory in the Printed Page
Article provides additional support for the advantages of physical, printed books. Many new studies are cited. Q: Why the puzzling resilience of printed books? A: Better learning by physically moving through the pages; The fixed shape and frame of reference of pages are great aids to memory; Paper and book design always guarantee proper functioning of reading activity. Academic Press Leiden and Amsterdam University Press, 2018.
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