Blog Post - Week 2 - Pages to Pixels: The Transformation of Publishing

The Guardian (Source: Google's creative commons)

"For the past five hundred years, humans have used print — the book and its various page-based cousins — to move ideas across time and space. Radio, cinema and television emerged in the last century and now, with the advent of computers, we are combining media to forge new forms of expression" - futureofthebook.org

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In week one's lecture, Prof. Murphie laid the foundations of the 'Publics and Publishing in Transition' course . And from the outset, it become readily apparent that we - as media consumers - have largely determined the reasons both how and why published content is delivered to us in a certain fashion.

Initial, and key points to take away from the lecture...

-  Publishing: To issue, or cause to be issued, in copies made by printing or other processes – for sale or distribution to the public.  To make public, or generally known

- Printing: Is not the be all and end all, there are other means of publishing. 

Although not limited to just a one way influence, developing technology has also had a great say in the ways we go about our every day life - even in the way we kill flies ...

And again, although the above clip is not to be taken as gospel, it does reflect the idea that we have had to - and continue to - alter our behaviours thanks to technologies overarching presence.

Source: wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_printing

From woodblock printing (200CE) through to the Digital era of the early 1990s, Printing methods have long undergone a means of change to befit the requirements of the public at the time.

As observed in the allotted readings for this week, and thanks largely to the development of the press, "To consult different books, it was no longer essential to be a wandering scholar" (Eisenstein, 1979:2). 

Furthermore, through the digital revolution and the readily accessible nature of texts, students (or consumers on a whole) may not need to employ a wide means of search to uncover a large sum of information. Such is the beauty of the digital era.

Brannon (2007:353) details the change in perception of the printing process, through time. "To these children of the digital age 'print' is the verb for the end process, the output of their computers."

Thus, I am of the opinion that the term 'Print', as well as that of 'Publish', must remain liquid (or fluent, dynamic, omnipresent, etc...) as technology further develops amidst the digital age.

3D and 4D printing have spurred on greater change and given light to new pathways not before trodden. The full extent of change (or influence) these technologies have over the general public is not yet fully clear, and such levels will be further determined in due time.

"These days, texts, the ideas they embody, and the vehicles by which they teach us are formed not by sequenced lines of metal type sorts but by the congruence of millions of pin points of carbon light"
 - Brannon, (2007:364)


References:

Eisenstein, E. (1979)  - ‘Defining the initial shift: some features of print culture’ in The Printing Press as an Agent of Change Vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 43-163

Brannon, B.A. (2007) -  ‘The Laser Printer as an Agent of Change’ in Baron, Sabrina et al., (eds.) Agent of Change: Print Culture Studies after Elizabeth L. Eisenstein Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press: 353-364