17.1: Preface
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I am writing these words on a sheet of white paper, with a (cheap, disposable) fountain pen. By the time you read what I am writing, however, it will have been transformed. First, I will transfer it by a different set of bodily actions (typing on a keyboard) and through the software on my computer to convert it into a string of 1s and 0s. I will then send it through the ether to the editors who will, in turn, submit it in a similar digital form to the publisher. The publisher will use the digital file to produce a paper version, in essentially the same way that books have been produced for over 500 years, since the development of the printing press (in Europe) by Johannes Gutenberg. The chances are that you are now reading this in a form familiar for half a millennium, although you might well be viewing it on a digital device, again translated by that device’s software into an arrangement of black and white pixels that mimics the printed page. Such are the processes of writing and reading in the second decade of the 21 st century...
How to cite this book chapter:
Bennet, J. 2013. Epilogue. In: Piquette, K. E. and Whitehouse, R. D. (eds.)
Writing as Material Practice: Substance, surface and medium.
Pp. 335-342. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: http:// dx.doi.org/10.5334/bai.q