Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age - Hardcover

Levy, David M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1559705531 ISBN 13: 9781559705530

Publisher: Arcade Publishing, 2001

Synopsis

We are surrounded by documents of all kinds, from receipts to letters, business memos to books, yet we rarely stop to reflect on their significance. Now, in this period of digital transition, our written forms as well as our reading and writing habits are being questioned and transformed by new technologies and practices. What is the future of the book? Is paper about to disappear? With the Internet and World Wide Web, what will happen to libraries, copyright, education? Starting with a simple deli lunch receipt, Scrolling Forward examines documents of all kinds from the perspectives of culture, history, and technology in order to show how they work and what they say about us and the values we carry into the new age.

About this title

About the Author

David M. Levy has a Ph.D. in Computer Science and has been a researcher at Xerox's high-tech think-tank, PARC, since 1984. He is also an expert on calligraphy and bookbinding. He lives in Oakland, California.

Reviews

Levy's book may not give documents the same cachet that Simon Winchester's The Map That Changed the World gave to maps, but readers will never look at a deli receipt in the same way after finishing this gripping discussion of written forms. With digital media acquiring an increasingly important place in communicating news and ideas, Levy looks at what the continuing transition from print to digital means at both practical and symbolic levels. The Internet and other electronic publishing platforms now deliver information faster than at any time in history, but tend to lose the depth of the printed page, Levy argues. And while there are good reasons to receive certain types of information quickly, there are also good reasons to read an entire printed book at one's own pace. Levy, who has a Ph.D. in computer science as well as a degree in calligraphy and bookbinding, maintains that one isn't necessarily a Luddite because he or she still prefers to read information on the printed page. To help support his position, Levy devotes one chapter to explaining why he prefers reading Leaves of Grass between covers to reading it on an e-book. Still, digital delivery of information has its merits, and striking the right balance between print and digital works is something that needs to be worked out in the years ahead. Although Levy does not come to any striking conclusions, his assessment of how documents work and what they say about our culture and values is a worthy one.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Levy earned his Ph.D. in computer science in 1981, then devoted the next two years to studying calligraphy and bookbinding. This combination of the new and virtual and the old and physical sensitized him to the vast, complex role documents of all kinds play in our lives in matters practical, psychological, and even spiritual. Postulating the broadest possible definition of documents, or "talking things," Levy offers a vigorous, philosophical, and intellectually stimulating interpretative overview of their evolution and impact on culture. He begins with the humblest of examples, a cash-register receipt, and then embarks on a brisk history of paper, printing, the many genres of documents (books, passports, letters, greeting cards), libraries, and the importance of fixity, a topic he broaches by discussing the many editions (online included) of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. As he considers the vagaries of digital technologies versus our craving for order, he expresses unexpectedly poetic insights into our carried-in-the-genes sense that there is a "sacred quality" to reading, even in the age of multitasking. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Arcade Publishing
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1559705531
• ISBN 13: 9781559705530
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 212