iles in Custodians 2015

Don't let our knowledge be
crushed. Care for the libraries - care for the metadata - care for the backup.
Water the flowers - clean the volcanoes.

30 November 2015

Dusan Barok, Josephine Berry, Bodo Balazs, Sean Dockray, Kenneth Goldsmith,
Anthony Iles, Lawrence Liang, Sebastian Luetgert, Pauline van Mourik Broekman,
Marcell Mars, spideralex, Tomislav Medak, Dubravka Sekulic, Femke Snelting...

* * *

1. Lariviere, Vincent, Stefanie Haustein, and Philippe Mongeon. “[The Oligopoly of Academic Pu

iles in Dockray 2010

and scanning, with
the obvious goal of returning to the pure book, or
an even more Platonic form.
That purified, originary version of the text
might be the e-book. Publishers are occasionally
skipping the act of printing altogether and selling
the files themselves, such that the words reserved
for “
well-scanned”books ultimately describe ebooks: clean, searchable, small (i.e., file size). Al­
though it is perfectly understandable for a reader
to prefer aligned text without smudges or other
mark

ety by the book and these windows into
the actual room where the scanning is done are
ultimately rendered as solid, censored black. After
the physical scanning process comes post-produc­
tion. Software— automated or not— straightens

99

one's files are not always located on one's
equip­ment. The act of storing and retrieving shuffles
data across machines and state lines.
A public space is produced when something
is shared— which is to say, made public — but this
space is not the same ever

different from the public that is
formed by bootlegging those same books.
ft would appear that publicness is not simply a
question of state control or the absence of money.
Those categorical definitions offer very little to
help think about digital files and their native
tendency to replicate and travel across networks.
What kinds of public spaces are these, coming into
the foreground by an incessant circulation of data?
Tw o paradigmatic forms of publicness can be
described through the lens of the scan and the
export, two methods for producing a digital text.
Although neither method necessarily results in a
file that must be distributed, such files typically
are. In the case of the export, the system of
distribution tends to be through official, secure
digital repositories; limited previews provide a
small window into the content, which is ultimately
accessible only through the interface of the

text,
while there will be one approved version (always a
clean one) of the export. A person may hold in his
or her possession a scan of a book but, no matter
what publishers may claim, the scan will never be
the book. Even if one was to inspect two files and
find them to be identical in every observable and
measurable quality, it may be revealed that these
are in fact different after all: one is a legitimate
copy and the other is not. Legitimacy in this case
has nothing whatsoever to do with internal

om the same edition), but, more
likely, functioning in parallel.
Gompletists prefer the export, which has a
number of advantages from their perspective:
the whole book is usually kept intact as one unit,
the file; file sizes are smaller because the files are
based more on the text than an image; the file is
found by searching (the Internet) as opposed to
searching through stacks, bookstores, and attics; it
is at least theoretically possible to have every file.
Each file is complete and the same every

ons to establish the institution; it is difficult to
imagine a corresponding form of cultural sharing
of texts within the legal framework of the export.
Instead, publishers might enter into a contract
directly with the government to allow access to
files from computers within the premises of the
library building. This fate seems counter-intuitive,
considering the potential for distribution latent
in the underlying technology, but even more so
when compared to the "traveling libraries" at the
turn of

 

Display 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 ALL characters around the word.