Book Review: The Future of the Page edited by Peter Stoicheff and Andrew Taylor

How does one read a book whose fundamental premise is its own demise? It feels a bit like visiting an elderly relation in the old folks' home. The conversation is at times awkward, at other times nostalgic and entertaining. After all, when someone (or something) has been around for a long time, it gathers to itself a good collection of tales to tell.

But eventually, one asks: is there anything for me to learn from all this talk? In my experience of these situations, the lessons never come from the talk; the talk is just nervous banter to avoid thinking about the inevitable. The valuable lessons happen in the silences; they take their substance from what remains unsaid. In some measure, that is true as well of The Future of the Page, a volume of essays edited by Peter Stoicheff and Andrew Taylor.

These essays took their beginning from a conference held in 2000 at the University of Saskatchewan. The conference and later reflection provided an opportunity for people who make their living by thinking about print media and culture to be intentional in approaching the transition from print to electronic media. As the title suggests, this is not concerned so much with the book as it is with the book's building block — the page. Historically, the page has emerged as a medium unto itself quite apart from the book, with its peculiar meanings and ideologies, limitations and functions. And it is the page which is the primary unit of information for most of today's Internet users.

Immediately, we confront the first puzzle not directly discussed within the book, but nevertheless obvious the instant we pick it up in our hands. This book is palpable. It is larger than a paperback. It is filled with illustrations. In fact, one chapter is printed on glossy paper. Why a book? Why not a website? Why not a collection of web pages?

The beginnings of an answer emerge from the opening essays which consider an earlier transition from one medium to another – the transition in the 15th century from illuminated manuscript to mass–produced page on a printing press. In some respects, the evolution of the printed page occurred as an organic process, determined perhaps by innate aesthetic preferences and an instinctual approach to our own cognitive needs. But in other respects, the printed page came to reflect the aims of those who controlled the means of production.

Early religious and legal texts were licensed exclusively to specific presses, often presses owned by academic institutions like Oxford University. Many of the conventions laid down by early printers, such as those relating to footnotes and marginal inscriptions, persist to this day and have assumed an authoritative force that is difficult to flout. The editors and most of the contributors to this book are likewise from academic institutions and subject to these long–standing expectations. In part, an academic's performance is measured by publishing history. Tenure and income depend upon it. But it is doubtful (from a university's point of view) that a paper is truly published if it is available only as electronic text. So if the contributors to The Future of the Page wish to benefit from their contributions, then they have to present their work as something more substantial, in a medium more "real."

Article Author: David Barker

Theoblogger - a forty-something ex-lawyer theologian from Toronto dedicated to finding the nuggets beneath the mountains of crap that some try to pass off as belief.

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