Manchurian Books

It led to a revolution in publishing and to the print
book. All these advances are now being reversed by the e-book.
Luckily, the e-book retains one innovation of the parchment -
the hypertext. Early Jewish and Christian texts (as well as
Roman legal scholarship) was written on parchment (and later
printed) and included numerous inter-textual links. The
Talmud, for example, is made of a main text (the Mishna) which
hyperlinks on the same page to numerous interpretations
(exegesis) offered by scholars throughout generations of
Jewish learning.
Another distinguishing feature of books is portability (or
mobility). Books on papyrus, vellum, paper, or PDA - are all
transportable. In other words, the replication of the book's
message is achieved by passing it along and no loss is
incurred thereby (i.e., there is no physical metamorphosis of
the message).

The book is like a perpetuum mobile. It spreads its content
virally by being circulated and is not diminished or altered
by it. Physically, it is eroded, of course - but it can be
copied faithfully.


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