Matthew G. Kirschenbaum: Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing (2016)
Filed under book | Tags: · computation, digital humanities, history of literature, history of technology, literary theory, materiality, media archeology, media theory, technology, word processing, writing
“The story of writing in the digital age is every bit as messy as the ink-stained rags that littered the floor of Gutenberg’s print shop or the hot molten lead of the Linotype machine. During the period of the pivotal growth and widespread adoption of word processing as a writing technology, some authors embraced it as a marvel while others decried it as the death of literature. The product of years of archival research and numerous interviews conducted by the author, Track Changes is the first literary history of word processing.
Matthew Kirschenbaum examines how the interests and ideals of creative authorship came to coexist with the computer revolution. Who were the first adopters? What kind of anxieties did they share? Was word processing perceived as just a better typewriter or something more? How did it change our understanding of writing?
Track Changes balances the stories of individual writers with a consideration of how the seemingly ineffable act of writing is always grounded in particular instruments and media, from quills to keyboards. Along the way, we discover the candidates for the first novel written on a word processor, explore the surprisingly varied reasons why writers of both popular and serious literature adopted the technology, trace the spread of new metaphors and ideas from word processing in fiction and poetry, and consider the fate of literary scholarship and memory in an era when the final remnants of authorship may consist of folders on a hard drive or documents in the cloud.”
Publisher Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016
ISBN 9780674417076, 0674417070
xvi+344+[16] pages
via slowrotation
Reviews: Brian Dillon (The Guardian, 2016), Jessica Pressman (ALH Online Reviews, 2016), Eric Banks (Bookforum, 2016), Dylan Hicks (LA Review of Books, 2016), Kirkus Reviews (2016), Francis Russell (Hong Kong Review of Books, 2016), A. Bowdoin Van Riper (PopMatters, 2016), Leann Davis Alspaugh (Hedgehog Review, 2016), Thomas Padilla (American Archivist, 2017), Lai-Tze Fan (Papers of The Bibliographical Society of Canada, 2017), Seth Erickson (Interactions, 2017), David Walden (TUGboat, 2017), Grant Wythoff (Revista Hispánica Moderna, 2018), Elena Spadini (Umanistica Digitale, 2018).
Online companion
Publisher
WorldCat
Joan Lyons (ed.): Artists’ Books: A Critical Anthology and Sourcebook (1985)
Filed under book | Tags: · artists book, book, conceptual art, publishing
“This anthology is the first in-depth look at artists’ bookworks. A series of essays, written by longtime participants in and observers of the field, address the following questions: what are the origins, attributes, and what is the potential of artsists’ books; what are their historical precedents; what issues are they addressing; who is making and publishing them? The essays are supplemented by extensive bibliographies and a list of collections.”
With texts by Richard Kostelanetz, Ulises Carrión, Lucy R. Lippard (2), Shelley Rice, Barbara Moore and Jon Hendricks, Clive Phillpot, Susi R. Bloch, Betsy Davids and Jim Petrillo, Felipe Ehrenberg, Magali Lara and Javier Cadena, Alex Sweetman, and Robert C. Morgan.
With a preface by Dick Higgins
Publisher Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY, 1985
ISBN 0898220416, 9780898220414
269 pages
Digested version
Publisher Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY, 1985
68 pages
via kaackattack
Review: M. Kasper (Papers of Bibliogr Soc of Am, 1986).
WorldCat
WorldCat (Digested version)
PDF (13 MB, added on 2019-10-26)
Digested version: PDF (28 MB)
Marcello Vitali-Rosati: On Editorialization: Structuring Space and Authority in the Digital Age (2018)
Filed under book | Tags: · algorithm, authority, digital media, editing, editorialization, media, open access, public space, space, web, writing
“In this book Marcello Vitali-Rosati examines how authority changes in the digital era. Authority seems to have vanished in the age of the web, since the spatial relationships that authority depends on are thought to have levelled out: there are no limits or boundaries, no hierarchies or organized structures anymore. Vitali-Rosati claims the opposite to be the case: digital space is well-structured and material and has specific forms of authority. Editorialization is one key process that organizes this space and thus brings into being digital authority. Investigating this process of editorialization, Vitali-Rosati reveals how politics can be reconceived in the digital age.”
Publisher Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2018
Theory on Demand series, 26
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License
ISBN 9492302209, 9789492302205
114 pages