The Luftschiffer is committed to
the digital media of book publishing.
Never before could
anybody and everybody carry his entire
library on a single light-weight tablet – in
my case 6.400 volumes – encyclopaedias,
dictionaries, references, text books and a
plethora of entertaining literature in all
colors of the spectrum, whether high brow in
good academic editions or low brow for the
instant indulgence, and hey!, where else can
you get a book that reads itself back at you
aloud? Let's not even dwell on the reference
features within the book and the links to
external sources on the web! We have come a
long way.
Initially human
speech was just chatter in the trees –
the indiscriminate exchange of words
to no other purpose but to asserting
one another's presence. A good deal of
talking is still reserved for this
social lubricant. Yet over the ages
with ever more incisive precision the
indiscriminate exchange of words
became a vehicle of sometimes
downright confrontational dialogue and
gossip. Chatter turned to
communication. And in a more
politicized society, individual
monologues served not just as a form
of public address but also conveyed
stories and dramatic performances. One
side-effect was the highly formalized
and yet redundant language of
these performances – a
formality of patterned and repetitive
speech needed to assist the memory at
a time and in an ambiance where
unaided memory was still the only
vehicle of reference. Yet from then on
we observe the ever more rapidly
loosening up of human speech in ever
new guises of pretended and at times
genuine informality.
This was made possible
because of a new technology, the
innovation of writing and the
alphabet. Written text proved to be a
much better memory aid and offered a
more structured access to knowledge. A
contract was no longer a taxing
exercise among the fading memories of
aging witnesses. Instead, there it
was, written in stone, a memorial for
generations to come. The Greeks,
always an unruly, argumentative and
loquacious lot at the best of times,
then moved on to scripted speech: they
invented the drama. The more
innovative minds didn't stop here and
by now we are all but overwhelmed by a
high tide of texted monologues:
narratives, and scientific statements,
and, verging on the insane, even
philosophic reasoning. Enter the stage
Gutenberg and the printed book.
In the wake of the
printing press we witnessed the
arrival of hitherto unheard of
standards of exactness for industrial
implements and of referential accuracy
in the documents, not to mention of
previously completely unknown methods
of scientific experimentation and
exploration. These standards and
methods by now have become part of our
social and mental economy, the science
in our laboratories would have been
anything but science without gauged
slide-rules and equipment accurate to
the fraction of a dot. Yet even that
is now a thing of the past, we now
measure by Planck lengths and
look directly into the
architecture of the atom.
The
new digital media intervene into our
speech habits every morning from the screens and
displays overseeing our
breakfast tables.
The hamfisted controversy
of Victorian oratory has been
neutered and light-footed routines
make our politicians taking lessons
from stand-up comedians.
Where all
this is leading to remains to be seen.
The Luftschiffer
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