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Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents…
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Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age (edition 2003)

by David M. Levy

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2433109,465 (3.64)None
A fascinating, insightful, and wonderfully written exploration of the document. Like Henry Petroski's The Pencil, David Levy's Scrolling Forward takes a common, everyday object, the document, and illuminates what it reveals about us, both in the past and in the digital age. We are surrounded daily by documents of all kinds--letters and credit card receipts, business memos and books, television images and web pages--yet we rarely stop to reflect on their significance. Now, in this period of digital transition, our written forms as well as our reading and writing habits are being disturbed and transformed by new technologies and practices. An expert on information and written forms, and a former researcher for the document pioneer Xerox, Levy masterfully navigates these concerns, offering reassurance while sharing his own excitement about many of the new kinds of emerging documents. He demonstrates how today's technologies, particularly the personal computer and the World Wide Web, are having analogous effects to past inventions--such as paper, the printing press, writing implements, and typewriters--in shaping how we use documents and the forms those documents take. Scrolling Forward lets us see the continuity between the written forms of today and those of the past. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.… (more)
Member:esoteric103
Title:Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age
Authors:David M. Levy
Info:Arcade Publishing (2003), Paperback, 240 pages
Collections:Your library
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Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age by David M. Levy

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This book explores changes in written communications, now that the digital age is upon us. Levy first has a mediation on the uses of a simple retail store receipt to information only available on the computer or via the internet. Although the book was written ten years ago, it well worth reading today. David Levy can wax philosophical but nevers wallows in that space, keeping grounded in the reality of how we have changed over the years. The word document has a far wider meaning now that computer files are called documents, some change from the day when every document seemed official, if not officious. Levy has spent some years doing calligraphy, so understands the physicality of the book and of writing itself with specialized instruments. ( )
  vpfluke | Feb 17, 2011 |
A highly accessible overview of the changing meaning of texts. The author engages in a wide-ranging discussion of cash register receipts, printed books, postcards, digital documents, and business technology in an attempt to create a framework for understanding how to read, enjoy, profit from, and preserve written knowledge when that knowledge is increasingly manifested solely in bits and bytes. He brings to the discussion his background as computer scientist, calligrapher, and reader, and since he's not a librarian, there's no library-jargon. He has an abiding concern with libraries, however, and with their mission and future. A bonus for me: he includes an interesting discussion of a book about digital libraries by my former professor, Fran Miksa. ( )
  karenmerguerian | Aug 7, 2008 |
Not an especially deep book, but it had its moments. His concept of 'Documentation' is essentially what I've been trying to capture in my book on 'Information', being that stuff that is captured.

Good material on publishing industry providing a vettin ( )
  jaygheiser | Jul 23, 2008 |
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Epigraph
Why should i wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God,
and in my own face in the glass,
I find letter from God dropt in the street,
and every one is sign'd by God's name,
And I leave them wheresoe'er I go,
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.
—Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
as reproduced in the Peter Pauper edition of Leaves of Grass
Dedication
For Zari
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Toward the beginning of of Woody Allen's 1977 movie Anni Hall, little Woody (called Alvy in the movie) is sitting in the doctor's office with his mother.
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A fascinating, insightful, and wonderfully written exploration of the document. Like Henry Petroski's The Pencil, David Levy's Scrolling Forward takes a common, everyday object, the document, and illuminates what it reveals about us, both in the past and in the digital age. We are surrounded daily by documents of all kinds--letters and credit card receipts, business memos and books, television images and web pages--yet we rarely stop to reflect on their significance. Now, in this period of digital transition, our written forms as well as our reading and writing habits are being disturbed and transformed by new technologies and practices. An expert on information and written forms, and a former researcher for the document pioneer Xerox, Levy masterfully navigates these concerns, offering reassurance while sharing his own excitement about many of the new kinds of emerging documents. He demonstrates how today's technologies, particularly the personal computer and the World Wide Web, are having analogous effects to past inventions--such as paper, the printing press, writing implements, and typewriters--in shaping how we use documents and the forms those documents take. Scrolling Forward lets us see the continuity between the written forms of today and those of the past. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

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Hachette Book Group

2 editions of this book were published by Hachette Book Group.

Editions: 1559706481, 1559705531

Arcade Publishing

2 editions of this book were published by Arcade Publishing.

Editions: 161145221X, 1628723270

 

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