Reading for 9 October 2006

Scrolling Forward by David M. Levy

Preface

I think it’s fascinating that Levy has an interest in both the future and the past of printed materials. This will hopefully result in revelations that are uncommon and new. It’s rare to find a “techie” who is also enamored of the ways of the past (unless it has to do specifically with his field).

Chapter One

Levy’s approach of analysis – of looking at a printed piece outside of the glamorous world of manuscripts – is a nice touch. There is definitely a hidden technique to reading receipts (and a lot of other texts) that no one really gets taught; they’re expected to pick these up on their own. He makes a good point about how documents change (for instance, the e-receipt is coming in), but he also states that they stay the same. There is a fundamental theory of the text – or text subtype – that they have to keep to in order to be useful. It behooves us to keep in mind that, although something is electronic or digital, it's still essentially the same message that the author is attempting to convey. Whether it is still successful is another matter entirely . . .

Chapter Two

Levy's discussion of the text as an item that is granted speech (by writing) is not far off from how the ancient Greeks saw it; they viewed even a reader reading aloud to have been taken over by the writer. I think this is where e-documents get in trouble -- the fixity (as Levy puts it) is thrown to the wind a lot of the time. If a caption is misplaced or there are misspellings, it's definitely not the same document as the author intended, and may even convey the opposite meaning as intended. Levy talks about this, and I think it's a valid point. However, I also think that a lot of the errors made are caught by readers or the author fairly quickly, and that it is a problem that can be overcome.