Chartier talks about the novelty of our situation, pointing to a concurrent revolution 'in the technology of the production and reproduction of texts, a revolution in the medium of writing, and a revolution in reading practices'. Something else is novel: we are in possession of conceptual and theoretical tools, argumentative practices and varieties of discourse that inform the way in which we make intellectual sense of new technologies, just as these new technologies allow for the proliferation and intensified communication of these concepts, theories and discourses (text-e is one example). The result is what might be a real, but equally an illusory integration of technology with intellectual content. For the question remains, as Chartier's text shows and in spite of the discussions opened yesterday, of whether or not our computer-age children really will think and write differently from the way in which their parents do simply because of a technological revolution. Those who grow up with bed-time stories still like linear stories. Once education and technology are brought together, then we might have an intellectual revolution similar to that of Gutenberg, beginning with a real increase in literacy.

As Noga Arikha points out, there might be a an illusiory integration of technology and intellectual content brought about the proliferation of discourses around these new practices. Technological changes have impact of our minds and our ways of making sense of ourselves, but they do not necesseraly affect our cognitive needs. Cultural artifacts such as narratives, stories, books, etc., have been succesful also because they fit human cognitive constraints as information processors. We still do not know how new technologies of information and communication will satisfy these constraints.

Consider the broader context. I expect that the way a person first learns how to learn will determine whether the web is an evolution or a revolution for that person.

Television continues to serve as the primary (if not only) information source for many people. Those who grew up with television are more likely to be comfortable with the multimedia nature of the web (evolution), while finding the participatory aspects of the web to be a new frontier for personal expression (revolution). By contrast, those who primarily learned from hard copy books, newspapers and magazines, and who may not have had access to television while growing up, will find most aspects of the web to be entirely revolutionary.

I like Chartier's discussion of the volumen and the codex. Ten and more years ago, I would discuss the use of computer information technology in the practice of law with my fellow lawyers, and was I often received a negative response (e.g., "we've always done it this way" or "lawyers don't type"). My colleagues had first learned law using a set of information technologies (law cases bound in books and referenced by topics in bound digests) that only came about with the Industrial Revolution, but they considered that set of information technologies to be the only way by which information should be communicated. The historical context shows that we now call "information technology" has evolved in fits and starts, and each such change has shaped (or reshaped) what we consider to be knowledge, how we preserve that knowledge, how we communicate that knowledge, and how we respond or comment on that knowledge.

The Internet is not just a network of networks, it is a medium of media. Unlike radio and television, the Internet embraces virtually all pre-existing information technologies, making it easier to re-use and re-purpose books, magazines, newspapers, radio shows, television shows and the like, with relatively little loss of the information conveyed. Of course, the experience of the reader/user or recipient of the information will be somewhat different as a book written a century ago for readers now long dead may not have the same resonance when seen on a the screen of a desktop computer or a personal digital assistant. That said, the best books will continue to resonate, and I expect that my small children may not see much difference in my reading to them a Dickens tale from a PDA instead of from a hard copy book.

Finally, the financial and other costs of information cannot be ignored. Television remains a relatively inexpensive medium for viewers to receive information due to advertising and other subsidies. Small television sets in the U.S. can be easily had for under US $100 new and will last 5-10 years or more, and a substantial amount of continuing content is available at virtually no additional charge (e.g., the cost of electricity, a safe place to keep it). By contrast, and despite falling prices, a desktop computer in the U.S. costs about US $500 to $1000 new and will last 3-5 year or more, and Internet access is $10 to $15 per month. Providing access through schools and libraries shifts the costs to those institutions.

--Fred Wilf

I was raised on printed text and a moderate diet of broadcast audio and video, and I would term myself a traditionalist. I was 38 when, in 1983, personal computing became easy and inexpensive enough. I rushed right in because I needed and wanted to be engaged in this revolution. I *needed* word processing; I *wanted* communication via email and information via bulletin boards (later, the web). In contast, my mother, now 86, has no similar needs and desires. Likewise in contrast, my teenage daughters had the intense, continuing desire to continue their social life in this form, too. (Maybe this is a hormonal need!)

So I am persuaded that this revolution in reading and writing hinges on the scope and intensity of such need and desire. The key additional element is economy: is my one need and desire sufficient for someone else to produce content and to make it available on demand? In the electronic age, with its enormous economies (at least in countries that are well-wired), the producer-consumer ratio *can* be much closer to 1:1. In the age of Gutenberg, it surely had to be orders of magnitude higher, like l:100 or 1:500, so that he could put bread on the table.

Therefore the "style" of this revolution is toward intimate social relations and personal service, away from mass-market products and industrial production. Soon, therefore, hardly anyone will think of the computer, the Internet, etc. in any large-scale or "social" terms. "Can I find the answer to my question about Qatar right now?" "Is G-Dot online for a chat right now?" "Is the Harvard library server up right now?"

I really believe that many other matters are purely secondary. Once upon a time bulletin board content scrolled at 300 baud (approximately reading speed) or 1200 baud (oh, too fast for anything other than picking up the main idea), and we users thought that was great. Now we can jump here and there at the speed of light, and save images of medieval manuscripts, and engage in several activities simultaneously, and we users think this is great, too.

Give us anything. Give us raw ASCII text, give up hyped-up hypertext with 60 GIFs per page. Meanwhile, I put things out there as plain-text email, sometimes a long chunk of something to be saved on a 14GB hard drive.

It needs standards; it needs no standards. It needs control; it needs no control. It needs theory; it needs more chaos.

Actually, there is no "it" because it's becoming ubiquitous, part of the background noise.

But it's wonderful. More, please, and now.

Just do it.

When my husband first bought a computer (a 486) at a phenomenal price, I hated it. I couldn't understand his preoccupation with this black and white monster of a screen that spoke in Dos prompts, and whatever it was, hooked my husband like no woman could. in fact, I called it his second wife. This was 15 years ago. Today, I write, I recite, I learn, I earn through this lovely machine.Of course, now its windows all the way-and a window, nay, a door to the whole wide world through the World Wide Web. Color, form, movement, music-everything is possible on screen and at your fingertips. Knowledge-you can access it any time, any where. Chat-you can do it with anyone. Help-strangers can save your life through the net.Communication, entertainment, accesability-what have you, can anything else offer you so much and more? If this is revolution-we need it! As a child, I was an avid reader-books excited me.Now, I am an avid interneter-nothing can tear me away from this window to the world and the diverse people that inhabit it.We have to move with the times-and this is the future.

¡Hola, buenas!

The distinction between evolution and revolution is very puzzling when discussing a new technical means, like internet. We tend to assign the REVOLUTIONARY label to things that seem to have appeared almost suddenly in world history (i.e., the wheel, the vaccines, the train, and whatnot). However, the fact that some things change the material environment (thereby, presumably, changing the mental contexts of people) should not obscure the fact that many of those things do not imply a behavioral or mental revolution, but merely a reinforcement on a given human trend.

Look at the following trend. Humans used to listen to one concert, participate on a discussion or conversation, watch one match or play, etc. Nowadays, we can dial our radios from one station to the other, keep zapping on our TV screens, participate on twenty discussions at the same time, etc. We evolved from the traveler type who kept his diary and made sketches to the tourist who knows that he is in Prague because it’s Thursday, and that on Saturday he will arrive in Vienna, where he will take millions of pictures with his digital camera. In my country (Spain) people used to sit down in a bar or go to a cabaret in order to spend the afternoon or the evening chatting and dancing. Nowadays, people visit almost every bar in town to have a drink in each, have difficulty at having a complete chat, or go to cocktail parties where one passes from person to person in seconds…

The internet possibilities which give us the chance to go from one place to another also in seconds, to pick up information from thousands of sites, etc., seems to me to follow the same trend. Internet would be, then, an evolutionary enhancer of this particular trend. Could that become a real revolution?

From my point of view, all this jumping from place to place in order to find something (happiness, information, relief, etc.) seems to make people hang from superficial hooks so easy to use they might give us the impression that change for change’s sake is what is needed. What one gains in width, then, might involve a loss in depth. But why should depth be more important for humanity? Just because some people feel it is?

Perhaps the REVOLUTION at the end of this evolution is really to achieve human individuals with no mental depth at all, so that real thinking might be abolished and a new era will finally begin. I think that, in this sense, I will remain reactionary for the rest of my life!

¡Hast’adiós!

Lorsque Roger Chartier considère une “possible hégémonie économique par les plus puissantes entreprises de multimedia”, il estime avec justesse la dimension économique de cette révolution de la lecture, voire des moyens de production du texte écrit. Cependant, il me semble qu’il y a un autre aspect fort important dans ce moment actuel d’une possible révolution de la lecture et de sa coéxistance avec des formes déjà établies du texte écrit: il s’agit de l’hégémonie du marché éditorial, celle qui persiste d’une certaine manière dès le XVIIIs. Or, le cadre actuel démontre que les grandes organisations éditoriales dominent encore le champs de production du texte surtout du livre didactique. Aussi, il se peut que la matérialité du livre ne répresente pas une révolution disons structurale du marché éditorial si l’on rend compte de l’existence continuelle d’une hiérarchie parmi les libraires dans le commerce international et régional. Si je prend la réalité du Brésil, dont la population lectrice malheureusement ne représente pas l’exemple attendu pour les maisons éditoriales, il est de toute façon remarquable qu’une série de nouvelles entreprises étragères – qui profitent de ce contexte de mondialisation économique – investissent leur capital pour constituer un centre hégémonique dans un pays périphérique. Ainsi, si nous étions en face de la mort du livre, pourquoi est-ce qu’il subsiste encore cette intouchable organisation du marché libraire qui consacre encore les différences de participation entre un centre hégémonique et sa périphérie? En outre, il n’est pas le temps de discuter les changements actuels tenant compte la structure du marché et la relation existente entre les centres producteurs et les plusieurs consommateurs qui, enfin, paient très cher pour avoir un livre? Pourquoi est-ce que nous ne pensons pas la révolution du livre comme une grande sédition contre le marché mondial, c’est-à-dire, pour une vraie démocratisation de la lecture en multiples langues? La réponse est déjà là: peut-être, la révolution n’est qu’une coéxistence de différents moyens de reproduction du texte écrit.

Il semble tout d’abord que le choix des multiples supports de lecture qui s’offre enfin à nous, soit légitimé avant tout pour sa "fonctionnalité". Mobilité de notre époque, le lecteur peut donc à présent commander, lire, sans se voir limiter ni par l’espace ni par le temps. Fonctionnalités techniques : bibliothèque dans notre poche, lecture pratique etc.. Pourtant plusieurs problèmes subsistent dans l'esprit du lecteur qui reste bien réticent face à cette nouvelle évolution du livre, qu'il persiste à ignorer : Une réticence bien compréhensible du lecteur actuel correspond à une certaine incompréhension des outils multimédia ; ceci n’est pourtant pas le seul frein de l’e-book. Il y a également le rôle social que l’on accorde au livre, "objet-texte" ; c’est un rôle que le numérique, "fichier-texte" peut difficilement récupérer. D’abord parce que celui-ci n’arrive pas encore à justifier son existence formelle, en dehors de critères purement "opportunistes" ; d’autre part parce que le fichier texte ne bénéficie pas de la même autonomie que le « livre papier » (l’écran de notre ordinateur ou de notre palm n’a pas la même convivialité.) Le livre physique classé dans notre bibliothèque, devient parmi d'autres le témoin d’une érudition qui nous appartient. Qu’en sera-t-il d’un livre numérique réduit à n’être qu’un fichier classé dans un dossier de notre ordinateur ? Il est d'ailleurs paradoxal de constater qu’un livre papier, faisant autorité dans nos sociétés modernes, perde de sa valeur, dès lors qu’on le propose en format uniquement numérique. Cette frilosité s’explique aussi par l’aspect encore trop linéaire du texte-fichier. Quelle différence entre le livre papier, et sa copie électronique ? (Le livre hyper-textuel restant encore qu’un premier pas vers un nouveau mode d’écriture et de lecture, mas est-ce suffisant ?) Le titre de ce débat est « Is this a revolution ? » Non, le livre numérique n’est pas une révolution au sens politique du terme : bouleversement brusque et général. Il semble être une "révolution" au sens cosmologique : mouvement circulaire d’un mobile qui revient à son point de départ. En l’état, il semble en effet, pour reprendre le terme de Roger Chartier, que nous nous trouvions bien devant une transfiguration du livre, celle-ci ne dépassant pas le livre, tout en perdant pourtant sa vraie spécificité ; pour beaucoup il est déjà un autre objet. Nous pouvons constater la mutation évidente du livre. C'est-à-dire, une évolution vers une nouvelle forme, un nouveau format ; celui-ci pourtant ne parait être qu'une simple "imitation" du livre papier. Pourtant cette mutation, est nécessaire pour donner au livre un nouveau souffle ; une nouvelle autonomie, sans pour autant rentrer dans une démarche trop manichéenne qui voudrait que l'on oppose papier et numérique. Cette mutation, il est également trop tôt pour bien la préciser. Parce que que le livre électronique, demeure un livre qui a son outil, sans pourtant encore avoir l’idée.