Tag Archives: week 4

Culture in Books and Books as Culture

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Amaranth Borsuk’s The Book explains the various forms of physical mediums that writing has taken up over time. In it, there is an inherent questioning of the literal definition of a book (Oxford English Dictionary, for example, defines it as “A portable volume consisting of a series of written, printed, or illustrated pages bound together for ease of reading”). Understanding the etymology of books brings its’ existence as a concrete concept into question in the same way that all of language is. For there to be an “objective” definition of what a book is would mean that there would need to be some sort of objective truth in the first place. Tracing the etymology of anything unveils that it is the result of hundreds, often thousands, of years of human experiences.

Because what a book physically is has changed so much over time (paper, papyrus, wood, or bamboo; written horizontally or vertically; read as we read it today or “like a laptop” (43)), the cultural experience of reading a book must have changed too. In the past, for example, being a scribe was a miserable experience, “they spent six hours a day hunched before the page in a cold scriptorium, incurring back-aches, headaches, eye strain, and cramps…” (48). Today, anyone who would create a hand-written book would do it as an artisanal craft and presumably out of passion. What would be required of a book-maker is completely different today versus thousands of years ago. What I want to emphasize is that this creates a completely different experience with the book thus changing the relationship and context surrounding books and the book reading experience.

Books seem to have a cultural resurgence among Gen Z as entertainment–I feel that books lost this for a few decades when TV and video games ruled as modes of storytelling. I wonder if the accessibility of books today has something to do with their modern association as a leisure activity. It is now easier than ever to read any book that you can imagine, dozens of different tablets exist for this activity. Additionally, hundreds of websites exist that post various modes of literature that would have previously been in book form. It is perhaps this unprecedented ease of access that causes phenomena like “booktok” which specializes in leisurely and captivating reading.

Week 4: My Story with The Book of Kells

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When I was 13, I went to Ireland and Scotland with my family. My dad’s half Irish so we wanted to explore our family roots and culture as it was important to my Grandparents to go, experience, and see other places. While we went to many places during our two-week trip, a city we all enjoyed was Dublin.

As my cousins, siblings, and I, were all teenagers at the time, we didn’t necessarily appreciate the constant walking tours of tombs, ruins, churches, and museums. And I, especially didn’t like that we stopped at least once a day to go to a bar. I got so mad one day that I made my family stop on the side of the road and go pet goats and sheep as penance. But Dublin, we all enjoyed.

One stop we made was Trinity College, where we did a tour of The Old Library, holding volumes and stacks of old books. One such book we saw on the tour included with The Old Library was The Book of Kells, mentioned in Borsuk’s The Book Chapter 1. I didn’t quite understand the importance of it at the time, and I wasn’t in my book fascination and fetishization phase yet, but I can tell you that it is a beautiful book and a beautiful library. I was at the time intrigued with the images and manuscript drawings that weren’t in modern books.

After my siblings and I finished the tour walk-through quite quickly as we didn’t see the importance of seeing a random library, we were heavily scolded by our tour guide that waited outside. She stated “Education has been wasted on you. History has been wasted on you.” And while we didn’t understand her words and ignored her judgement at the time, I did get it years after.

What we ignored was history. We didn’t understand the importance of a religious book because we have millions now. Why would it be important? We didn’t understand the weight that manuscripts hold to the accessibility and history of knowledge and information sharing. That library and what it contains, is the history of the Church, it’s spread and power of information, which leads us to where we are now. It also shows how intricate details and drawings woven into writings has mostly been lost to time and aren’t used anymore.

She was right. We didn’t appreciate that we got to see a piece of history, literature, and culture, and a part of the system that helped the accessibility to knowledge because of Christian texts and copying.

I very much want to go back to see that library and book with the appreciation I do now. I think now I would be in there for hours admiring the work and sacredness of the texts and the beauty of the library. Every old piece of paper or writing or drawing isn’t just that, it’s a piece of history and one of the reasons we have the knowledge and critical thinking that we do now.

The History of Everything

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What seems to be constantly simmering under the surface of every discussion of the history of books/the written word is that, although we generally view these things as sources of knowledge or history, they cannot be extricated from the history itself. And it seems to me that the history of the book is the history of everything. Borsuk writes in chapter one of The Book that we must “think about the way [the book’s] materiality is both a product and constituent of its historic moment” (34).

I think this is best exemplified when thinking about the early history of the book, where Borsuk details that the first earliest versions of paper–clay tablets and papyrus scrolls–were born of the rivers that the civilizations that birthed these things were centered around in Mesopotamia and Egypt. As human civilization evolved and animal husbandry went from smaller to larger operations, people were spread more into the countryside where they had the space to raise livestock. As a byproduct of that husbandry we saw the rise of vellum paper. With widespread farming came production of flax, and ultimately, linen which is still in use today as a paper product.

If we continue to chart the evolution of civilization in tandem with the book, we can often see the values of the society the book was produced in not only in its text, but in the actual arrangement of the physical book itself. So each book sends a message before it is ever opened. If a book must be easy to transport and withstand the elements it must be contained in a hard cover. If one wishes to project wealth and status today they may have a library of many leather-bound books. Bibles and Qurans are both printed on very thin paper, both to keep down the cost and the weight for their end users. Cheap, mass-market paperbacks exploded in popularity in the mid 20th century, coinciding with the massive fame authors of the time period enjoyed and in tandem with corporations having vested interest in cost efficiency and profit over quality of the product. If the work is the same but the book is printed cheaply, that drives up revenue for the publisher, but consumers are left with an objectively inferior product that was not built to stand the test of time.

Week 4: Reading and Writing’s Shift

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In Chapter 1, “The Book as Object”, in Amaranth Borsuk’s, The Book, what really struck me was how writing, as we know and define it today, was mistrusted by the most revered scholars of the time. In the final section of the first chapter, “Reading and Writing’s Shift”, Borsuk explains that “the great thinkers of Greece, in fact, mistrusted writing as a technology that would destroy the oral arts of debate and storytelling on which they based their sense of the world” (Borsuk, 55). For the kind of reading we know today it “would have to change its context and text in form… which means literacy would have to extend beyond the elite and monastic communities” (Borsuk, 56). 

What we base our entire education on, and how we define the book and our access to knowledge, was distrusted, discouraged, and feared by Socrates. He believed that transcription “is a crutch that will both hamper memory and more philosophical thought in ambiguity, leaving interpretation in the hands of the reader” (Borsuk, 56). While context is still important, how we  (the individual holding the book) interpret literature and writing (separate from the intention of the author) is now the most crucial skill we learn. The transition from oral and limited transcription, to our more accessible, modern practice of writing actually “allowed rhetoric to flourish” (Borsuk, 56).  The “book” as we know it today is not in its final form, just as the tablet and scroll evolved, so will our definition. Many of us express how digitized literature, media, and AI scare us, how we are fearful for future generations’ attention spans and ability to think for themselves. Past scholars’ concerns “echo contemporary anxieties about the ways digitally meditated reading and writing shortens our attention spans and ability to engage deeply with texts” (Borsuk, 58). It makes me realize that future technology has always been feared and mistrusted. As mediums of reading evolve, how we read reflects that evolution. What Socrates feared is why we are all here today, and it makes me reconsider how I view and fear future technological advancements in writing and the “book”.

Accessibility Shapes the Book

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After reading Chapter 1 of Amaranth Borsuk’s The Book, the deeply intertwined relationship between technology and “the book” has become clear to me. As Borsuk writes, “the book, after all, is a portable data storage and distribution method” (12). Books are not only a way to preserve human intelligence but also a means to spread knowledge quickly and efficiently across wide populations.

The ability to distribute knowledge has always been central to human progress. Like we discussed in class, information was reserved for the elite who had access to clay tablets or scrolls. These objects were fragile, time-consuming to produce, and limited in circulation. As a result, the spread of ideas was often slow and laborious. However, as Borsuk depicts in Chapter 1, the evolution of the book reflects a consistent pattern: each new form of book that came to be was to make storing and sharing knowledge more efficient. From tablets to scrolls to codex, these technological transitions were never random but rather direct responses to humanity’s ever growing need to communicate and learn.

Lying in the evolution of the book is, how Sigmund Freud states, human nature to know everything. People have always craved learning and sought faster, more accessible ways to acquire knowledge. With greater access to texts, more individuals were able to read, reflect, and expand upon existing ideas. What was once confined to a small region could suddenly travel across nations, inspiring revolutions in science, politics, and philosophy. The cumulative effect of shared knowledge created a foundation for the technological revolutions that followed. Without the distribution power of books and archives, many of the breakthroughs that define human history would not have been possible or traceable at that.

Yet, this relentless drive to make books more accessible has also come with a cost. Earlier books were not only containers of knowledge but also works of art. They were meticulously crafted by scribes and artisans. As printing technologies advanced, the emphasis shifted from artistry to efficiency, prioritizing mass production over craftsmanship. While this allowed knowledge to reach millions, it also diminished the individuality, beauty, and human labor once woven in every page. In our current digital era, the physical artistry of bookmaking is even further removed, reminding us that in our pursuit of accessibility, something of the book’s original artistry has been lost. This tension between accessibility and artistry also complicates how we evaluate media today. With mass production and the endless stream of information online, it is often difficult to decide whether media is “good” or “bad.”

Week 4: The Book, Chapter 1

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When I read Amaranth Borsuk’s The Book, Chapter 1, one sentence really caught my attention: “Content does not simply necessitate its form, but rather writing develops alongside, influences, and is influenced by the technological supports that facilitate its distribution.” (p. 17, ll. 17-18)

At first I had to read it twice because the English is a bit heavy, but what it means is actually simple. Books and texts don’t just find a form because of their content. Instead, the medium itself, like clay tablets, papyrus scrolls, codices, or today’s e-books, shapes how we write and what we write. And at the same time, writing pushes those technologies to change too.

I think this is super interesting because we often believe that content is the main thing and the medium doesn’t matter. But if I think about my own reading habits, it’s clearly not true. For example, when I read on my phone, I definitely skim more and jump around. When I read a paper book, I am more focused, I even underline or make notes. So the form totally changes my behavior and also the way the author can reach me.

Borsuk also points out that throughout history, different forms didn’t just replace each other. Scrolls and codices coexisted for a long time, just like today I read both on my phone and in paperback. It’s funny, because when I came here for exchange, I couldn’t bring many books in my suitcase, so I rely more on my e-books on my iPhone. But when I go to the library, I really enjoy holding a physical book again. I wouldn’t say one is better, but they feel completely different and change my relationship with the text.

This makes me think about how new platforms influence writing styles today. Twitter/X with its character limits made people write in short, sharp bursts. TikTok captions and comment sections encourage different rhythms, more visual, more fragmented. Even academic reading changes when you can search PDFs instantly instead of flipping through pages. None of this is neutral.

So maybe the big lesson is that the book or text is not just about content, but always about the interaction between content and form. Borsuk helps us see that the “death of the book” is not really happening, it’s just transforming again. And maybe in 100 years, students will look back at our e-books the same way we look back at scrolls. As just one stage in the long, messy coexistence of forms.

The Endless Scroll

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Reading chapter one of Amaranth Borsuk’s The Book, I paused at her description of the papyrus scroll and found myself drifting into thought. She describes papyrus as light and flexible, yet not easy to carry around. A scroll required both hands to handle, or a table to place it on, and reading moved in one long, continuous line. There was no flipping back or comparing passages. The form itself made reading linear and tied to time.

What stood out to me here is how much the material itself shaped reading. On the one hand, a scroll was very simple to use. You unrolled it and followed the line forward. That simplicity made reading easy. But at the same time, it was clumsy to transport and hard to navigate. You could not easily go back to a section or hold two places at once. In that sense. While reading was straightforward, it was also limited.

This suddenly reminded me of how we read today on phones. In many ways, social media feeds are modern scrolls. They run in one continuous stream, moving from top to bottom, easy to follow but difficult to step outside of. The big difference is that technology has solved the old problem of portability. What was once heavy and awkward to use is now light, instant, and always in our pocket. So in a way, we carry the scroll everywhere.

But this comes with new effects. The papyrus scroll at least had an end. After some time, you would eventually reach the bottom. The digital scroll, however, never ends. Feeds refresh again and again, keeping us moving and holding just enough of our attention. This shapes how we read. We skim, swipe, and move on quickly, very rarely stopping and taking some time to reflect. Where the codex brought depth and comparison, the feed pulls us out and throws us into an endless scroll.

Borsuk’s description of papyrus made me realize that reading has always been about more than words. It is also about the form that carries them. The scroll once kept reading on a linear path. The codex later opened new ways of moving through text. And today, our screens have brought the scroll back, this time in a portable, digital form. The question is whether this return to scrolling opens up new freedom or if it traps us in a flow we can’t really step out of.

Content Developing Alongside Technology

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Within the first few pages of “The Book,” by Amaranth Borsuk, there is a quote that really opened my eyes to a thought I’d never had before. The quote is as follows: “Content does no simply necessitate its from, but rather writing develops alongside, influences, and is influenced by the technological supports that facilitate its distribution” (Borsuk 3).This idea that the writing within a book, scroll, website, etc. has not necessarily been the impetus of certain kinds of technology, but vice-versa. My mind immediately thought about fanfiction posted on sites such as AO3 or Tumblr. Fanfiction is writing based on another person’s story, comic, TV show, movie, book (etc), that is not ‘cannon’ (isn’t actually in the story either at all or at the moment) in the original work. This can cause a fracturing of the story into something new, but still related to the original, that can be disseminated through those aforementioned sites to other fans of these stories. My point here is that fanfiction seems to have been mainly an effect of the web—aka a new technology that is able to support its distribution. I had always though of it being the other way around, that it was the content that caused evolution within the technology. So flipping this idea on its head in regards to some content was something that caused me to think about which technologies made it possible for certain content to become available, made, and popular.

Books Don’t Die

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The chapter from the book “The Book” by Amaranth Borsuk is a adequate introduction to understanding books as objects. I was particularly struck by the realization that book forms do not disappear completely in history. This thought could also be connected to our discussion in class: „Fear of new media“. Borsuk argues that “Different technologies of the book exist side by side throughout its history: tablet and scroll, scroll and codex, manuscript and print, paperback and e-book”. Clay tablets, papyrus scrolls, books and hypertexts coexist for centuries and do not simply disappear. Borsuk emphasizes that the development of these forms should not be seen as a linear sequence. The new does not immediately replace the old. They complement each other.

Their coexistence shows that media change is much more complex than one might think. I find this idea particularly interesting. There is obviously a lot of discussion about whether digital media means the “end of the book”. However, Borsuk criticizes that question and emphasizes the coexistence and diverse functions between print and digital. But if no form is replaced, does coexistence mean that no form is ever definitive? According to this argument, the “true book” or the “true form” would not even exist. It is merely a matter of transporting knowledge and stories, which works in different ways. It is therefore a question of generations and individual needs as to which medium is preferred. Occasionally, I read a paperback on a hammock, an e-book on the train or bus. 

The e-book, on the other hand, which is often seen as a threat to the printed book, could be seen as part of a long history of the coexistence of individual media. Instead of splitting these different forms off from each other, we should see them as complementary media. Each form has its strengths. While the printed book convinces through its materiality, haptics and durability, the e-book is mobile, easily accessible and flexible. Both forms help to preserve knowledge and make it accessible. 

Borsuk’s chapter thus shows that the book has evolved. Each new form expands, but never completely erases. The keyword here is diversity. Dr. Pressman stressed the fear of new media in class. I somehow cannot understand this “fear“, because instead of seeing the emerge of new media as a linear process we should see it as a circular one. This whole idea of remediation is really important and an advantage for our acquisition of knowledge.

The Book’s Influence on Writing

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The first chapter of The Book by Amaranth Borsuk discusses the evolution of today’s codex’s predecessors, the development of writing surfaces, and oral and written language. In the exploration of early forms of books, like tablets, scrolls, jiance, etc., Borsuk inevitably reaches the topic of written language as a natural consequence of the development of the book is the evolution of both written and oral communication. 

I had never considered that writing developed alongside the birth of book forms. For some reason, I just assumed writing simply developed from language and someone trying to visualize that language, as is the case in the creation of Hangul. I also certainly never considered how that could also shape a language. When Borsuk brought up cuneiform, I never considered that it was because of the resources available, being the reed for a stylus, that the Sumerians’ written language, composed of lines and triangles, was a result of it. It was more similar to early pictographic languages like hieroglyphics and Chinese. 

Another example of the format on which language is written influencing the written language is the jiance, which “influenced the very shape of Chinese writing” (Borsuk, 26). Borsuk details the crafting of jiance by cutting bamboo and tying the strips together to make a writable surface out of the abundance of bamboo in China. When visualizing the jiance process, I was confused about how writing on it worked since bamboo, even when sliced open, isn’t that big. Borsuk then revealed that “the traditional Chinese style of writing from top to bottom arises directly from the book’s materiality – a bamboo slip was too thin to permit more than one character per line” (26). Reading this explanation made everything click in my mind on how writing and books are intertwined in their influence on each other. 

This chapter solidified when we talked about the book being a physical thing that influences writing and works alongside it. Though the idea made sense, it was still abstract to me until now. I enjoyed learning about how different old script was compared to today and how written language was crafted to be easier for oration, at least in Greek and Roman culture. Considering how books and language are now, it’s amazing to see how we have changed communication to fit our cultural and societal needs.