Page 37 - Virtual Research Lab flip book

ware to enable its creation and programming. Since a device is required for communication between the human and the file, the digital file only serves its purpose for communication if it is running in the reading or reading/ writing device. However, because a digital file of this type can neither be cre- ated nor used without such a reading device does that mean that a reading/ writing device is an integral part of my text? This is an interesting question. If, for example, there was only one specific reading device required to read a specific text we might argue that the device in that instance is an integral part of the text. However, because digital files can be downloaded over the web to a variety of non-unique reading devices providing they are running the right software, I would argue that the digital text exists independently of the reader, but that the text does not become a “book” until it is in a usable form in some kind of reader.
We might presume that these issues of distinguishing between the digital file and a reading device have no precedent, but if we go back in history be- fore writing, or in ancient or medieval culture, a text could be passed down orally from person to person through memorization. If the text had no writ- ten form, the text stored in human memory would have been like a digital text stored in an electronic memory, and the person storing it in memory and reciting it to others, would have been like an eReading device today.
Reflecting on common qualities of books stripped away from their phys- ical attributes, I thought that one quality common to all books, physical or digital, is a static text at the time of completion.15 Including this quality, however, confuses the textual aspects of the book with its form and function. Certainly before written literature, books such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey did not have fixed texts until their texts were codified at the Royal Library of Alexandria.16 Another problem with including a concept of a fixed or static text, or even any form of text within our definition of the book, is that so
15 I am grateful to my son, Max, for critiquing my definition of the book and stimulating me to improve my definition through spirited discussions.
16 Commentaries on the Iliad and the Odyssey written during the Hellenistic period at Alexan- dria began exploring the textual inconsistencies of the poems which occurred as the result of different scribes writing down differing versions of poems passed down through the oral tradition.
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