New reading formats

Informative talk, linked to the itinerant exhibition «El món i un llibre: de l'escriptor al lector»
2008-2009

Long time ago, human beings learnt to talk and to listen. And then they transmitted experiences and traditions, that is, culture. Humanity had access to culture for the first time through the ear and the spoken word: by means of orality, human beings transmitted experiences and traditions. Since those ancient times, access to culture has been transformed, successively, by writing, printing and new technologies.

Writing transformed orality: in the past there was the oral message, now there is the written text. Writing didn't replace orality, but it allowed the message to remain through time, it modified the relation established between the message and the recipient. And now, milleniums later, new technologies have gone back to orality through the audiobooks.

The media used to store text evolved from the clay tablet to the e-book. The clay tablet lead to the scroll, then to the codex, the book and the digital media. The format has been changing, but the idea remains the same: the e-book appears with reminiscences of the clay tablet; the basis of text scrolling, characteristic of the digital documents, was already present in the scrolls.

Internet and the digital supports multiply the possibilities for approaching the book as a cultural vehicle: they give access to a remote document if it has been made available on the Internet, in a digital collection or in a virtual bookstore. Technology also makes it possible to listen to an audiobook in circumstances in which reading would be impossible; many people benefit from this, including blind people, who also have the Braille reading system.

Nowadays, the new reading formats mean a cultural rebirth only comparable with the invention of the printing press, more than five centuries ago. And they achieve that books are now accessible to more people and can be approached by those who were unable to read them. Because, after all, reading is more than a mere visual function: it's accessing a text through any of our senses, to interpret it and enjoy it.

Schedule

Related papers

Jorge Franganillo. «Convivir con el libro digital». Uno, 14 October 2009, p. 15.

Jorge Franganillo. «Ni libros vencedores ni libros vencidos». Anuario ThinkEPI: análisis de tendencias en información y documentación, 2009, p. 30-33.

Jorge Franganillo. «La industria editorial frente al libro electrónico». El profesional de la información, vol. 17, no. 4, July-August 2008, p. 416-417.

Jorge Franganillo. «Llibres de tota mena: nous formats de lectura». Última Hora Menorca, 22 April 2008, p. 15.