I present the evolution of marginalia, from early handcrafted books to the present day ebook readers. I’ll eventually ask what happens when we start turning books into social platforms through marginalia, with tools such as CommentPress and Digress.it For more see http://theory.isthereason.com/?p=3031

1. Social Marginalia How authors & readers give books immortality Kevin Lim @brainopera

5. The Future of Reading in a Digital World Clive Thompson

12. Second-hand copy of Ulysses, James Joyce Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cobra/5465955/

13. The Glosas Emilianenses are glosses added to this Latin codex that are now considered the first phrases written in the Castilian language. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalia

14. Illuminated manuscript painting by Sargis Ptisak, who was a 14th century Armenian artist. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalia

18. http://www.flickr.com/photos/brokenthoughts/561629475/

21. GAM3R 7H30RY is a networked book. Source: http://www.futureofthebook.org/gamertheory/

25. CommentPress & Digress.it Both are plugins for WordPress that let you comment by paragraph in the margins of a text.

28. Thoughts? Who owns the work? Does dialogue with readers improve content? How could the interface be more intuitive? Could we have an open standard for networked marginalia across mobile devices?