bloodraven11historyoftheboo-blog

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May 2nd, 2016 The last entry

This will be my final blog entry for my class, The history of the book. As far as classes go, this has been the funnest and probably most insightful class I have ever taken. Senior level classes are usually marked as stressful endeavors, marred with sleepless nights and tension. But this class was not so...It artfully blended collegiate work with artisanship. As far as the book goes my definition of what a book is has changed, and within that statement, a power message is said. “My definition of the book”... If anything I think this class has taught me the lesson of perspective in relation to personal meaning. The book means something different for everyone, and oddly enough it’s emotionally tied to our conscious.  Dr. Beebe, you have done such an excellent job with this class. It’s difficult to know whether an experimental class will succeed or fall flat on its face; but I think it’s safe to say this classes succeeded and met all it’s goals. I write this blog and hour before going into the last time I will meet my fellow classmates, and I want to say to you all... Thank you... Thank you for the wonderful discussions we had, and I hope you all enjoyed the class as much as I did.

Seth Raven

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April 4th (late) The Nuremberg Chronicles

This blog is late coming, but I wanted to talk about a most exciting day. This day, we went to SMU and saw a collection of rare and old books. We were given the assignment to ask a specific question regarding the book we had chosen, and since I’ve always been fascinated by the Nuremberg Chronicles I found a question that I thought intriguing. 

From several pictures I found, a specific image of God sitting on his silver throne was flanked by what some have described as “wild men”, which in my personal opinion I feel could mean Germanic in origin. But in different copies of the Nuremberg chronicles I discovered that different copies have different coat of arms painted on them. I had asked if this was a common way to declare that this book belonged to a certain lord. To my surprise the copy at SMU had blank shields, which the expert commented that, “ not all copies might have it and if they do they would have them in other places “. I was very satisfied with our trip to SMU and hope to do it again.

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April 25, 2016 Pictures of  the process

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April 25th, 2016

I took this week to talk about my creative project and some of the things I did to make it a possibility.

So, I wanted to do a wood burning of a Dr. Seuss book, so I chose the first 3 pages of green eggs and ham. It’s a favorite from my childhood and it always makes me hungry for ham :)

I took some thin birch wood and cut it into 6x6 squares which it gave me more than enough pages. But I only need 3. I then took tracing paper and traced the images from the Dr. Seuss book, which took me a lot longer than expected. I then took that traced paper and used a inkless pen to make impressions into the wood with the traced image. I then heated up my wood burning tool and began to follow the impressions I had previously made. Some were not pushed in hard enough so I had to do some guess work on the lines. After I had finished drawing over all three pages into the birch wood, I used a pre-waxed thread and blinded the pages together, to create a wood-burned 3 page book of Dr. Seuss. Overall I had a lot of fun making the project, and I’ve even considered doing the entire book!

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April 11th, 2016 Evolution of meanings

So on this glorious Monday, we read some publications from our Smithsonian Book of Books about different typographers who influenced modern book making. The articles more or less talked about the art of book making and what it meant to people like Stanley Morison and William Morris. 

But What I found interesting is particular words the authors of these publications used to describe their views on printing. They saw it as more of an “art form” than an industry or simple business craft. But the irony of this is that Stanley Morison created something that ended up losing it’s meaning as an art and just becoming a staple of everyday use... Times New Roman. 

The sweet delicious irony of this, it’s something I’ve been debating with my classmates and arguing for. When Stanley first made his new font their is no way he could have understood the impact he would have on modern printing. And how his “art” would be lost to the fires of industry and novelization. For my final project, I’m tackling or at least attempting an effort into making an art form Dr.seuss replica, using wood and wood burning techniques. This weeks readings seems to have strengthened my position on how we view books and how they change their meaning over time. Their definition is not static. 

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March 28th, 2016

So this week in my history/thought blog our Professor asked us to write about how different technologies have shaped or not shaped, in an overall sense, how I write. This seems like a difficult question for me, since I was born in 1990 I have had all different kinds of technology at my disposal and as such wasn’t able to see a specific change between my writing on paper and on a computer. I like to think I write a lot better on a computer than I do handwritten, mainly because my handwriting is atrocious. So I suppose in that sense, I might not be as lengthy or descriptive on paper as compared to a PC. I think it may for my generation, depend on the context of what medium we are using. For text messaging, my writing is definitely different from here or on paper as using abbreviations for things and shortening almost every single phrase is common place now. But that could be said for most as I believe text message in itself has created a weird subclass of writing lingo, almost as if we have created a dialect specifically for texting one another. When I begin to think about it, and break it down this way, I do see the changes that technology has brought to my styles and ways of writing. 

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March 7th, Teens, Toddlers and Mobile Devices

This past week we had little as far as reading assignments go. Earlier this week I listened to The Diane Rehm Show, which discussed different points of view on young kids and teens on mobile devices and whether or not this has negative side effects. This works fantastic with my current theme of technology and ties into some arguments I will be discussing in my paper. My thoughts on Teens and young children with tech fall in line with some of the arguments put forth in the discussion. Parents are going to have to learn and understand what kind of limits should exist and what type of restrictions should exist when it comes to using technology for entertainment purposes. However that last bit, “entertainment purposes” wasn’t properly discussed in my opinion, so now I will extend it a little. When it comes to restrictions I think having limitations is a good thing for when technology like tablets, phone games, computer games and TV are being used for entertainment. But parents must realize that schools are utilizing technology more and more, and it’s becoming an integral part of the classroom. So it comes down to the parent to recognize those different mediums of educational usage and to recognize entertainment usage. I think that in the end, it becomes the parents responsibility to limit children and teens in a healthy way. I also think that saying that using technology for entertainment purposes creates negative effects is a blanket statement. It doesn’t apply to all scenario’s, it depends on the child. Earlier in my blog we discussed how knowledge is power, but we come again to the point that it’s only good or evil, negative or positive, depending on the user. 

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February 29th Old perspectives, New publishing

(This post will just be more observational that discussion)

So the readings that were posted this week were most interesting for a couple of reasons. First we read an excerpt from the Smithsonian Book of Books called, “The Book Business”. Then we examined a excerpt from Cheryl Klein, detailing what publishing is, the business of writing, and the emotional baggage that comes with the process. I wanted to discuss two things that stuck out to me from the readings. The first being the, “The Book Business....

What was insane to realize as I was reading it, was that I was reading a piece from a perspective from the late 1990′s! The reading discussed how some people felt that large chain bookstores were destroying the sanctity of the “mom and pop” book store, which at first did not raise any flags. It was when I began reading the section on sony’s first attempt at the E-book, and how CD-Rom’s would never be books because they are used for referencing and such that I realized this author wrote this from such an outdated perspective. They had talked about how on-demand book making would probably become the new form of getting books to the public and such, and as I kept reading it made me smile more and more. It reminded me of an early 19th century painting of what the future was suppose to be like. Little did this author realize, the digital revolution had only begun to take it’s baby steps with E-books. I myself have 37 books on my tablet and to be honest that is a low number. It was definitely an entertaining piece to read, and made me reflect on the present technology. 

The other topic was in reference to the self publishing that Klein had discussed. A friend of mine is currently self-publishing his book, “Evolution of Angels”, and is doing all the marketing himself. It’s an impressive undertaking that I would think requires a lot of self-discipline and a lot of motivation. Being able to take a step back from your own work and critique it can be a challenge, but I think we will begin to see more and more self-published authors explode into the net. 

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February 22nd Gutenberg and my Father.

After our reading this week I reflected upon the history of the press and it’s relevance in our modern society. In one of our texts, the Smithsonian Book of Books, it gives a brief history of the modern era printer beginning with Gutenberg. I love reading this history for the fact that my father is in the printing press industry in our modern digital age. He is a specialist who travels around the world fixing printing presses when the press company cannot. His work has taken him to Africa, Australia, Europe, South America and all over North America. I say this to give the illustration that the world has been touched by Gutenberg’s genius innovation. Since then, the press has changed quite a bit, which brings me to the topic of my post. The modern press that we know within our digital age has gone through some changes of its own in the past 20-30 years. (side note, My posts seem to be having a theme of digital technology). Since the computer revolution many industries have had to adapt to the change in work flow and technology. Printers connected to servers have become commonplace and many new software’s and processes in printing have changed. My father has commented before that he has seen many older pressmen/mechanics not able to keep up with the change in dynamic. Some people could not adapt to using a computer as a tool with which the printer is now integrated into and thus fell behind the new age of printing technologies. With these new innovations printing new templates has almost become as simple as a click, and it will be interesting to see what changes we will bring next to his ever changing market.

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February 15th The E-book

Reflecting upon this weeks readings I came upon a possible topic for my research paper I will be doing later in the semester. Several topics we have read deal with the constant struggle between an age old argument, old technology versus new technology. Is it better for us? Will this change our quality of life for the worse? Several of the authors we have read argue that the age of the E-book/ internet is just like any other groundbreaking technology that has been introduced in the past. That it simply is the same cycle of better tech making more freedom and possibilities within it’s field and people claiming we are “losing touch” or “missing out” or whatever other nostalgic anti-progress nonsense they spew. But I think what hasn’t been discussed is the social changes the internet has brought upon our culture within such a short period of time, and then applying that to the revolution of the E-book. This isn’t like gutenburg, gunpowder, interchangeable parts or other significant scientific advances. The Internet has literally caused a cultural revolution that moves so fast that the people and denizens of the internet can’t keep up with it all! E-Books get thrown into this hurricane and just cause more chaos. We are moving from a generation who grew up with nothing but paper books to a generation who utilizes technology almost every waking second, and E-books are just another facet of our reality. 

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To be an ever-waser, never-better or better-never...

As my first blog entry of my class I feel it appropriate to share what exactly it is. I’ve been instructed by our professor to create a journal entry every week over selected topics relating to the class, which is about the history of the book, it’s context and importance within our past. Our first reading was over a New yorker article or journal called, “How the internet gets inside us” by Adam Gopnik. I think I should start off by saying that I am planted firmly between all three points/attitudes that Adam Gopnik describes, but more lean more towards the ever-wasers. The idea that this “problem” we have with technology creating a disassociation or whatever issues we decide it makes, has always existed. In some ways, it has existed beyond the advent of the Gutenburg press and beyond monks handwriting manuscript after manuscript. With each new technology it changes our perceptions of the world and how we function within it. The taming of fire brought light to our ancestors and some could say it brought on the era of settled civilization. Just as the train tamed the west and bridged the gap of distance between ideas. Each new technology changes us in some aspect, for better or for worse, and their will always be problems with it. In reality, the internet is absolutely changing our social behaviors, and disconnecting us from empathy. But on the same coin, we are able to witness more problems within our world and maybe conceptualize better solutions to those problems. And who knows? maybe the internet is bringing us to a new utopia of democratized information. But just as fire, and the train, and other new technologies have brought good, they also bring evil mainly because, as Gopnik puts it, it is the user who ultimately decides how it is implemented.