Re: Visual & Verbal are not as disparate as language suggests
- From: Sean McGowan <sean@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 18:39:54 -0000
Ha! Thanks all! :) I appreciate EVERYONE's help here. Way nicer
than those jerks over at Yahoo Groups!
....kidding. :)
Anyhow to live up to the headline of this post I do take this issue
seriously. I had a few rather heated debates with Michael Hart, the
inventor of eTexts, (link below) about form vs function and an
author's role in it. He invented one of the great organizations of
history, Project Gutenberg, which has brought the text of literature
to millions - at an unprecedented speed of distribution. But many
authors integrate more than just the text in their creation of art;
from illustrated poems to abnormal analphabetic symbols to
photographs, the line between visual and verbal communication is often
blurred entirely.
To further complicate things, the cost of including all of these
"formatting additions" is not merely a monetary one. Presently you
can store all the text in a typical public library onto $100 worth of
memory. Increasing the formatting increases the storage size - so the
same memory stick can hold fewer books. Moreover, some authors have
even written books around the type of paper used in print. How can a
digital version compete with that?
An extremely polarized gentleman from one side of the argument
suggests that it is up to the author to acquiesce the limitations of
his medium: the medium is the standard and, thus, correct. As such,
requiring a specific type of paper for a book is a mistake on the
authors part and, in general, authors ought pay close attention to the
means of distribution. This makes it easy for consumers and
encourages greater popularity of literature.
A different extremely polarized gentleman comes from the other side
and makes this argument: it is up to the medium to facilitate the
author at the expense of the audience. The author's intent is the
standard. The file size and time to encode and store the book is less
important than presenting the author exactly as he or she would like
to be presented: it is either great art exactly as the author intended
or nothing.
Both views, needless to say, are ridiculous. There is nonetheless a
common ground that is optimal, I believe.
This is a very important issue. As we speak these standards are being
created and used. My book, for example, is utterly senseless when
presented in the Project Gutenberg standard,but there will soon be
over a billion books that adhere to this standard. It has left me
behind but it has probably included ten thousand more books by having
such a simple, easily-parsed standard.
Does anyone else run into problems with distribution standards?
Anyone have strong opinions for artistic authenticity vs ease of
transmission?
Thanks again!
Sean
PS transcription of my debate with Mr. Hart is posted at http://mcgowan.be
under the BLOG section.
.
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- From: Sean McGowan
- Visual & Verbal are not as disparate as language suggests
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