What is it about?
Media archaeology demonstrates that the printed book has been the dominant media technology for five centuries now despite the impact of information technology innovation. During its reign, albeit perfecting its functions, it has locked its physical form in an unchanged “interface”. We only need to hold a copy of any incunable in our hands, for instance, “The ship of fools” by Sebastian Brant, printed in 1494 so as to be able to feel its “modernity”. What is more, a permanent devaluation of the aesthetic and psychosomatic characteristics of the print form towards elementarisation and clicheing can be observed in the mass book market.
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Why is it important?
The conclusion is that as far as the emancipation and humanisation of book formats are concerned, designers from the print and publishing industries remain indecisive and conservative, preferring to work in the comfort of their own personal book experience, which increasingly distances them from the needs of the radically new and ever more rapidly changing reader.
Perspectives
The perspective of media archaeology helps to correct the historical place and the evolutionary stance of the inventions pertaining to the Gutenberg Galaxy-the print medium, the printing press, the printed book, and paper as a printing resource.
Milena Tsvetkova
Sofia University
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This page is a summary of: Scientific Reassessment of the Publishing Evolution: А Media–Archaeological Approach to Prospective Studies of Book as Medium, Media Education (Mediaobrazovanie), March 2019, Academic Publishing House Researcher,
DOI: 10.13187/me.2019.1.143.
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