Books have always been thought of as an object in which it only transforms because of the information that it carries inside of it, but that’s not the only case. Amaranth Borsuk presents a point that I believe is very hard to argue against and that is that books are ultimately decided based on what the needs are of the time period. Some of these things being the fact that new information was wanted as well as how they were going to obtain the materials to create these because at the beginning it was all done by hand and not machine. “Book historian Fredrick Kilgour refers to the book’s development as a series of “punctuated equilibria” driven by “the ever-increasing informational needs of society” a useful way of thinking about the book’s transformations”(Borsuk p.3). Stories, novels, books, comics, manga’s, e-books and such all have developed in their own way because of the type of technology they use for the codex. The style of the how the book is created makes each of these types of books stand out in their own category which is something that I never really paid attention to until now. I mention this because chapter one dives into the history of scrolls, clay tablets, palm leaf manuscripts and how those materials influenced how information would be put on them.

If anything, this chapter has made me think of how books have been influenced by us and our needs of how we as a society want it to be. An example of this is how e-books are being used every day by people. The demand and use for e-books through kindles and such will essentially shape the way we show information to our viewers and how it will affect them.

I still can’t wrap my head around the technological advancements of how we created the book from the codex. It’s starting to make me analyze books in a way of “Is there really any other way to make this even BETTER or have we truly created the best possible way to absorb information through this thing we call “book”. Ultimately, Borsuk already has me turning my brain upside down in how I should start looking at books since we read the history and context of how it all started from the various different cultures. It really goes to show that text is not only the biggest influencer on how a book will be created for the current society, but rather multiple factors that you wouldn’t even guess.