changeable books

Caught up in the discussion of the electronic book versus the printed book, we miss the interesting link between the digital and printed, which is that printed books are now often produced and exist digitally.  This leaves even the printed book vulnerable or open to the possibility that when it is transferred digitally it may be adapted, added to, or re-edited by ‘pirates’, producing versions of a book that are anomalies with no record or trace in their physical appearance of their difference to the ‘original’:

http://rhizome.org/editorial/2012/apr/19/impermanent-book/

What the Sugababes can tell us about the internal workings of the iPhone

A never-ending reconfiguring and patching of parts.

The materiality of something is then definable only by a ‘sense’ – we may sense it’s concept, it’s idea.  This exists immaterially and is passed from one to another.  There is a constant found in its multiple form as incarnations of an idea, no matter how things are transmuted, arranged or appear.

‘Take the iPhone. Behind its quiet formal resolution and intuitive interface is a raging storm of lawsuits and counterfilings as vicious and contested as a Temptations reunion. Its substance is a patchwork of copyrights and patents, and multiple manufacturers that can be swapped in and out. Just as Theseus’s boat could remain constant as an idea, regardless of its material substance, the contemporary technological object exists first as an idea almost regardless of its multiple and shifting components.’

// creative possibilities & non-productivity

http://www.ica.org.uk/31496/Talks/The-Trouble-with-Productivity.html