Florian’s Writings

The impact of the printed word has changed significantly over the last fifteen years, yet the book still holds a preferred role as a conveyor of memory. I was always interested in the paradigm shift—the transitions and ruptures—when a new medium becomes old and a “new new” medium enters the stage. Looking at these transitory phases can help to better understand current developments. Early cinematography can hardly be compared to the beginnings of the Internet, yet the mistakes made and the way the medium was misunderstood are strikingly similar.

The papers below focus on three topics:

Publishing in digital media and electronic books
Digital Media Design
The concept of "memory" and the concept of "home"

I am always interested in a discourse and look forward to feedback and comments.

Multimedia Publishing
The Columbia Guide to Digital Publishing: Multimedia Publishing
Edited by Bill Kasdorf. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. 816 pages. cloth. ISBN 0-231-12498-8 $65. paper ISBN: 0-231-12499-6. $34.95. online at www.digitalpublishingguide.com

"Just the reference the publishing and printing industries have been waiting for."
– Craig Van Dyck, Vice President, Production and Manufacturing, John Wiley & Sons

Since the format of the book evolved from the continuous scroll to the page-oriented folio, no change in the practice of publishing texts has had such an impact on the way we perceive and use a book as electronic publishing. This paradigm shift changes the way text is perceived in time and space and the integration of text, video, and audio into a multimedia product is a logical step in an electronic medium. Yet it is not the technology that undergoes the biggest change, but the role of the publisher, who has to re-emerge as the agent of a new medium, still in statu nascendi. In the first phase of multimedia, everybody seemed to be empowered by the new tools and technologies to become a multimedia producer. Most multimedia publications do not live up to the promise of an interactive and integrated experience, but remain an exploration into technologies without a clear goal. It is the publisher who needs to act as the integrator of multiple media types, multiple experts, and multiple industries in order to do his job—to turn an idea into a product and make it public. This chapter gives an overview of the different technologies, standards, and business issues to be considered when extending electronic publishing into multimedia.

About the Columbia Guide to Digital Publishing. What is metadata? When do you need to archive digital content? How does electronic publication affect copyrights? How can XML and PDF improve your workflow and your publications? There is a digital dimension to virtually all publishing today. Beyond the obvious electronic media -the music and movies we take for granted, the increasingly indispensable Web, the eBooks that most of us will take for granted in a few years -almost everything we read, even on paper, was produced digitally. This new digital world offers a steadily increasing number of choices. It is this rich and rapidly changing publishing environment for which The Columbia Guide to Digital Publishing was created. Although there is a vast amount of information on a host of topics relevant to digital production and publishing available -some in print, more on the Web -there has been, until now, no single resource to which those involved in any dimension of publishing could turn for guidance. The Columbia Guide to Digital Publishing fills that need.

Additional information at Columbia University Press

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Tabula Rasa

Introduction to: Cutting Edge Web Design, by Daniel Donnelly. Rockport Publishers 1998

THE GOLDEN AGE OF DESIGN is neither gone, nor has it arrived: observing the desktop-publishing disasters on one side and the incredible potential of digital design tools on the other, we investigate the relations between digital media-both as a creative tool and as delivery medium-and design. By combining the grids of the Golden Mean with the layering capabilities of digital design software, we aim to understand the way design communicates in new media and how the wisdom of traditional forms can be integrated into a dynamic non-linear form. We need to break up the old structures-as gently as possible-and to leave space for new forms to grow within both new and traditional media.

Being on the cutting edge is always somewhat unstable—one longs for it, like traces of a strange and sweet scent that is also repulsive like the smell of decay. One follows the scent unconsciously, embarrassed and not even admitting the attraction to oneself. (More...)

Read an online Version of the Introduction to the book or download the Introduction as pdf file

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Books the Next Generation—
Reading on the Electronic Frontier

The Information Superhighway and Private Households:Case Studies of Business Impacts / W. Brenner, L. Kolbe, (Eds.). (Heidelberg: Physica, a branch of Springer,1996). X, 427 pp. 110 figs. ISBN 3-7908-0907-1

TODAY READING has successfully made the transition from paper to the dynamic medium of the computer screen and is becoming a common experience in the world of electronic media. And while the computer industry does everything to convince us that "multi"media will be the glorious future of electronic communication we convey most of our concepts by writing and reading, be it on the computer, be it on paper. The electronic book as a platform to read on a dynamic medium is still in a very early stage both in software and hardware and may look dramatically different from what we expect it to be at this stage. Still the book is the primary source for text and thus a container of memory.

This paper looks into the quality of private memory and its impact on our dealing with electronic media. (More ...)

Read the complete Chapter as pdf file and order the book

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