marginalia – Adam Hyde

Re-use

Xerography—every man’s brainpicker—heralds the times of instant publishing. Anybody can now become both author and publisher. Take any books on any subject and custom-make your own book by simply xeroxing a chapter from this one, a chapter from that one—instant steal!"   —Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the MESSAGE

This vision from McLuhan is of an analogue future. A future of analogue media and analogue networks. It would take digital media to realize his vision. Webpages being the networked document of our time enable the kind of instant steal that McLuhan foresaw. With free content licenses and simple tools for importing content from other books or other libraries, we can borrow enormous amounts of rich information to help us build the books we want.

In a recent Book Sprint on Basic Internet Security, 9 chapters from 3 existing manuals were reused – that was 15,000 words that we did not have to create afresh. Of course the material needed some work to fit the new context, but it was still a substantial time saver and extended the scope of the book well beyond what we could have produced in the time we had.

This was really quite amazing for me to see. The idea of reusing content was envisioned from the moment FLOSS Manuals was built, but, 3 years later, this was the first real case of substantial re-use. It takes time to build up the materials to make sense of re-use in this way, however, after waiting 3 years, I took a great deal of pleasure in seeing it happen for the first time.

Re-use is not just a time saver, however, there are many other exciting possibilities enabled by re-use. Re-use is also about translation and recontextualisation. Re-use is about updating books and improving them. Re-use is about taking content and making it work in your language. Re-use is about enabling anyone to get your content to their audience and in the form they need it. Re-use is also about allowing you to re-use your own work, since often publishers hold the copyright and do not permit authors to update, re-use, or improve their own work.

Re-use helps you make the books you want to make faster and get them to the people you want to have them in a form that suits them best.

Re-use, despite its attractive opportunities, is an issue that existing publishing models are going to find very hard to work with. This is because full engagement with re-use leads to the federation of content and the inevitable possibility that anyone can publish any book you have made. Taking a book, not changing a word, marketing it and selling it, is re-use. It is going to be difficult for publishers to agree to this consequence while tapping into the many opportunities for new business models around this idea. But that is not our problem. We want books to be freely re-used and we should find the most open channels to do that.

The core of re-use is primarily about extending the usefulness and life of a book.

One of the differences between a book and a newspaper, is that we expect longevity from a book¹. We expect a book to have value beyond the date printed at the top of the page.

The web offers enormous opportunity for the life of a book to be increased further than it is now. The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement is alive to this idea. They imagine you could take a mathematics text book and update it for the following year’s curriculum, or combine it with another book to better suit your students’ needs. Or correct it if you found a mistake, or translate it. Major advantages in all sectors, not just education, can be attained by keeping books alive.

Books currently have too long a life as a static object. They have become too static as a result of Gutenberg’s invention. ‘Static-ness’ is now a part of a book’s genetics. ‘Readers’ find it even hard to pick up a pen and write notes in the margin of books. Margin notes are frowned upon by libraries. We have forgotten that notes like this (‘marginalia’) were once very common. When paper was hard to come by, the margin notes were often where books were written.

So books did not always have a static genetic code. They once were places for lively discourse and for book production itself.

Interestingly, there is a kind of slow historical regression taking place because of digitally-networked media. There are a few projects (notably commentpress²and the yet to be released Social Book by Bob Stein, and some ebook readers) that enable types of margin notes in digital books. In the case of Commentpress these notes are the point of the book – a place to start discourse (almost literally) around the book.

However, we still cannot seem to embrace changing the book itself. It is one thing to allow ourselves to leave margin notes in this new era of digital documents, since we know the source will not be affected. We can easily spray comments around the book as the book itself stays intact. Can’t we allow ourselves to change the book too?

Books have always been changed over time. Ben Fry did a very nice visualisation³ of the changes Darwin made to his Origin of the Species over 6 editions. It is a nice work showing substantial changes, including the addition of an entire new section in the last edition. The Origin of Species was an evolving thesis and the book was kept alive over the period of Darwin’s life. The book’s ’life’ ended with Darwin’s.

But why must a book die with the author? Why can’t anyone contribute to a book to keep it alive, even during the life of its author? We feel somehow that this is breaking some kind of moral law (as well as copyright law). Forgetting copyright for now – why not improve the original? Why can’t we take a book, any book, and improve it, perhaps even while the author is still alive? Why is that idea so difficult for us to engage with?

Leaving copyright licensing aside for the moment – one part of the puzzle involves the overly rarefied respect for the authoritative version. The version born from the author. We (you or I) are not that author and so we cannot know the author’s intent with all its nuances. We should not meddle with a work because we would be breaking our unspoken contract to preserve the author’s intent. It would not be considered an appropriate thing to do. We do not have the authority to do it. The authority is inherent in the author alone – so much so, that the role of the author to the book is analogue to the role of ‘god’ to its creation. The author is the creator.

Sound like I am overstating the cultural value of the author? In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, the children use Piggy’s glasses as a magnifying glass to start a fire. However Piggy was short-sighted and hence starting fires with his glasses would be impossible as they are concave, and concave lenses disperse light⁴ . You cannot start a fire with concave lenses. Would we allow anyone to alter the book to correct this rather trivial fact? No. No, because the book is Golding’s world and in Golding’s world concave lenses start fires. Golding is the creator. He has the authority to change his creation and we do not.

I think that is a very deeply ingrained principle.

For this reason, many recoil in horror with the prospect of changing great works of art. We are in some way tampering with the mind of the creator – a kind of god. However, we must remember that if we change a book, we change nothing in the original. Books, unlike paintings, are not one-of-a-kind pieces. That is precisely why the age of Gutenberg has such an impact – books could be duplicated. So when we change a book (I’m not talking about historical paper artifacts, just the abstracted contents) we don’t destroy anything, and this is particularly true in the digital age. In fact, the digital age gives us more tools to take care of the provenance of a work. Hence we can easily have Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austin and Sethe Grahame-Smith⁵ .

How to we develop a culture where it is OK to change a book? Free Licenses are meant to change that but in my experience it is still difficult to get people to take hold of explicit free license clauses that enable derivative works and improve a work. They feel they lack the mandate to change. Many people still ask if they can improve a free/open book work even though the mandate to change a work is loudly passed on and articulated by ‘the creators’ to anyone.

In fact, it is difficult to pass on the mandate to change. It doesn’t help that large projects like Wikipedia are working against this mandate. Wikis and Wikipedia have managed to introduce ideas of participative knowledge creation, but as Lawerence Liang⁶ has argued, Wikipedia is possibly trying to establish itself as an authoritative knowledge base which also has the effect of revoking the mandate to chang,e as has been experienced by many new contributors that find their edits reversed.

I think we will leave this all behind in time, but it’s going to be a long time.

All books can be improved – even the most sacrosanct literary works. However we live with the notion of the authority of the creator. The only thing that can change that, is to take the rights afforded to us by free licenses and experience and value the possibilities open to us if we act differently.

We need living books, and under copyright we have to fight very hard to keep them alive. The first step it to take someone else’s book and improve it.

Daniel James^{^}
http://www.futureofthebook.org/commentpress/ ^{^}
http://benfry.com/traces/^{^}
http://homepage.mac.com/cbakken/obookshelf/vision.html^{^}
http://www.quirkbooks.com/book/pride-and-prejudice-and-zombies^{^}
http://vimeo.com/10750350^{^}

Improving Dostoyevsky

Largely because of the cheapness of paper and the cultural context arising from this cost, combined with the stardard print production process, we have come to worship the book as a static cultural artifact. It almost seems to us that ‘static-ness’ is a part of a book genetics so much so that many people find it even hard to pick up a pen and write notes in the margin of books. We have forgotten that notes like this (‘marginalia’) were once very common – when paper was hard to come by, sometimes the margin notes were where books were written. There is even a science dedicated to reconstructing manuscripts (‘textual criticism’) which is in part focused on how to construct ‘the text’ from works where the author has commented-on and changed their own works via the marginalia. It is hard to call these alterations ‘comments’ since they are direct interventions by ‘the author’. In the days when margins were used for notes by both readers and writers, it was sometimes difficult for the copyists (the profession that copied books which was common before the printing press) to know which were the author’s additions and which marginalia were ‘by others’. Hence textual criticism is often focused on the arguments surrounding which marginalia should be considered part of the ‘final’ work.

It would make some kind of sense that margin notes might come back into fashion since paper is so cheap that we can easily purchase clean copies of books to replace those ‘contaminated’ by marginalia. However, the choice has been to keep notes in note books, and leave the printed volume unaltered.

There are a few digital projects (notably Commentpress – http://www.futureofthebook.org/commentpress/ – and some ebook readers) that enable types of margin notes. In the case of Commentpress, these notes are the point of the book – a place to start discourse (almost literally) around the book.

The point is, that now, through projects like Commentpress, we are in a position where we can start to deconstruct the ‘unalterably’ of books. Ironically, we can welcome marginalia again, not because the price of paper is too high that we need to use the margins, or so low that it doesn’t matter if we use the margins – but because we don’t need paper at all. There is an interesting historical irony at play since we do not need ‘margins’ if we do not need paper. However, we can now feel marginalia is appropriate because it does not alter the source of a book.

It seems we are finding ways to have marginalia that do not contribute to the book but contribute around the margins of the book. Textual criticism in a few hundred years may might be an easy job since the textual critic can just parse the margins notes out of the source. The Foundation of the Long Now might have something to say about this since they advocate that we are living in what will be known as ‘the Digital Dark Age.’ Digital data has a very short lifespan and hence the data for digital-only texts might not exist at all or might only be accessible through forensic means. Still, the point is, we are still not talking about the unalterability of books, and we do not seem to be able to move towards changing the book only working around the outlines. This remains unchallenged, even though we can ‘fork’ books (copy the entire text and work on it leaving the original unaltered) and do with them as we like (especially now that free licenses are becoming more popular). We somehow still cannot bring ourselves to consider changing an existing book. Even harder is to allow ourselves the opportunity to believe that we can improve a book.

Why not? Translation is a way to improve a text. If this was not done then many texts within a single language would hardly be understandable today. Ever try and read some old English? Know what this is?

‘Oure fadir þat art in heuenes halwid be þi name;
 þi reume or kyngdom come to be. Be þi wille don in herþe as it is dounin heuene.
 yeue to us today oure eche dayes bred.
 And foryeue to us oure dettis þat is oure synnys as we foryeuen to oure dettouris þat is to men þat han synned in us.
 And lede us not into temptacion but delyuere us from euyl.‘

It is this :

‘Our father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.
 Give us this day our daily bread.
 And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debters.
 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’

The first text is in middle English (which existed in the period between Old and Modern English). In effect the work has been ‘improved’ so we can understand it (not a ‘literary’ improvement as such). Translation like this is a type of re-use. You take the text and transform it into another context. In this example the new context is another time. Translation being what it is, we accept it can always be improved even though sometimes there are ‘authoritative’ star translators – people who have translated a text with such nuance that it is considered hard to improve their translation. The German translations of Dostoyevsky by Svetlana Geier,(subject of the film ‘the Woman with the 5 Elephants’) are almost considered ‘final’ works in themselves. Somehow Svetlana Geier has come to be regarded as some kind of manifestation of Dostoyevsky. Even so, her works are translations and hence it is somehow easier for us to believe we can improve these because they are not the original.

So why not? Why not improve the original? Can’t we take a book, any book, and improve it? Why is that idea so difficult for us to engage with? Why is it easier for us to consider improving a translated work but not OK for us to consider improving the original? Why can we improve the work of Svetlana Geier but we can’t improve Dostoyevsky?.

Before going on – a few seconds to note a great irony here – we have the legal right to improve Dostoyevsky since his works are in the public domain – the copyright has expired so we are legally permitted to do what we like with the works. However we do not have the legal right to improve Svetlana Geier’s translations since they are translated works and as such are considered by copyright law to be original works. Svetlana’s works are still bound by copyright and will not expire for some time. And that, to me, goes to illustrate that ‘free licenses’ have very little to do with free culture.. but that’s another story…

One part of the puzzle involves publishing and authorship of static books building a robust unalterable context for the authoritative version ie the version born from the author. We (you or I) are not that author and so we cannot know the author’s intent with all its nuances. We should not, therefore, meddle with a work because we would be breaking our unspoken contract to preserve the author’s intent. It would not be, even though we have the tools and licensed freedom (in many cases) to change, considered an appropriate thing to do. We do not have the authority to do it. The authority is inherent in the author alone – so much so that the role of the author to the book is analogue to the role of ‘god’ to its creation. The author is the creator.

In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies the children use Piggy’s glasses as a magnifying glass to start a fire. However, Piggy was short-sighted and hence starting fires with his glasses would be impossible as they are concave and concave lenses disperse light. You cannot start a fire with a concave lens. And yet would we allow anyone to alter the book to improve upon what is a rather trivial fact? No. No, because the book is Golding’s world and in Golding’s world, concave lenses start fires. Golding is the creator. He has the authority to change his creation and we do not.

So many layers to unravel. Let’s roll back a little to Book Sprints again – they are interesting here because the books are born from collaboration. There is no single author whose intent we need to imagine and hold dear. The authority is distributed from the outset. However, in my experience, it is still difficult to get people to cross that imaginary threshold and improve a work, even though the invitation is explicit. Many people still ask if they can improve a Book Sprinted work even though the mandate to change a work is obviously being passed by ‘the creators’ to anyone.

In fact, there is no guarantee that collaborative works pass on the mandate to change. Wikipedia is an interesting case in point. Wikis and Wikipedia have managed to introduce ideas of participative knowledge creation, but, as Lawerence Liang (http://vimeo.com/10750350) has argued, Wikipedia is possibly trying to establish itself as an authoritative knowledge base which also has the effect of revoking the mandate to change as has been experienced by many new contributors that find their edits reversed.

I think we will leave this all behind in time but it’s going to be a long time.

All books can be improved – even the most sacrosanct literary works. This is a good example of the ways that change is often not a result of the possibilities of technology but instead a rsult of the possibilities that have been closed to us through our internalisation of old technology. We have inherited a notion of Immovable Type. The only thing that can change that is the shock of possibility, necessity, or time.