Dagan Books

“The Renaissance and the Reformation were rendered permanent by the very permanence of their canonical texts… nationalism developed thanks to the stabilization of laws and languages, and science itself became possible on the basis of phenomena and theories reliably recorded.” – Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making, 1998

Printed books have allowed us to record human history and knowledge in a format that resists death and disease, survives traumatic brain injuries, can be passed on (without revisions) to others, can be shared with readers in another city, state, or country from the author, and can be reliably reproduced. Print materials took knowledge from the mouths of oral historians and rote teachers and made it available to the eyes and minds of students from any religion or social class. While the digital format of electronic “books” allows for instant dissemination of material, that information lacks the solid characteristics of a printed volume: digital information must be fed electricity to stay alive, it cannot survive under conditions that might damage but not destroy a book, and it no longer includes the right of ownership which the purchase of a physical text represents. A digital text can be altered online, and those changes can filter down through all the derivations of that work, while a physical book can only be reprinted with “corrections” – it cannot be retroactively edited. A digital text can be rescinded from all readers simultaneously, while a printed text represents knowledge that can only be stolen from individuals, never from all readers at once. A book remains, solid and sure, where a electronic body is ephemeral and impossible to hold.