Presentation by Chris Meade, Director of if:book, london at the Media Futures Conference July 2009

1. chris meade if:book new media futures

2. booklovers are in denial
they like to think they live in a book-lined world.
actually even the bookiest read mostly in bed,
on the toilet, on the bus
books have been kicked out of the front room
and sent up to bed
meanwhile even my mum is multimedia

3. e-readers are boring
but they prove that books are an
experience that happen in our heads,
the book a souvenir of our visit

4. a book is…
a symbol of freedom
a container of culture
a conversation
a bounded entity
a constantly changing
form - from papyrus to
codex to paperback
and beyond

5. book groups
think they’re defending free
reading against the screen
but have turned books into
experiences that take a month
and end in a meal

6. what matters?
• sole authorship sometimes
• freedom of expression
• playfulness
• reader writer relationship
• range of possibilities
• depth of engagement
• “switching off and curling up with…”

7. compelling content
seeking out the harry potter, sergeant
pepper, ulysses, persuasion, the wire
of transliterature

8. imagination & digitisation
“Blake was always using new technologies,
often abusing technologies, not for the sake
of an interest in the technology per se, but
what he could use it for. He believed that,
rather like learning a language… if you
speak a different language maybe you ask
different questions. And the language of the
digital age is one that Blake would have
pursued.”
- Tim Heath, Blake Society

11. • www.songsofimaginationanddigitisation.net
• www.thegoldennotebook.org
• www.futureofthebook.org.uk/jacob/readernew.html
• www.futureofthebook.org.uk/tim/book.html
if:book’s fictional stimulus
& the motfothotbook

12. if:book
www.futureofthebook.org.uk