I have to disagree with the premise that the Net has brought a lot of innovations to the form of the novel. So what if House of Leaves prints pages upside down, etc: that sort of play has been done at least since Sterne wrote Tristram Shandy in 1760 and did things like insert an entirely black page after the death of a character.
I also disagree that publishing houses are so hierarchical and controlling. Book publishing actually puts a lot of control in the author's hands, particularly when it comes to content. Books are mostly written by individuals and there isn't a lot of heavy-handed editorial control of that content (for one thing, no one wants to pay for that editorial process). Publishers are also fairly willing to try different kinds of content, as long as they think a book might be the Next Big Thing.
If anyone disagrees with the last paragraph, compare the book industry to the music industry. Artistic content is massaged much more heavily in the music industry; the company participates in the recording and production process where the final artistic product is created. And commercial music has much tighter and more restrictive genres than book publishing. Maybe book publishing isn't an absolutely open process, but it is relatively open compared to other forms of commercialized art.
To contradict my subject line, I'll add that I think the Net has brought some writing innovations. The obvious one is email. RFC is also pretty cool.
>Umm..that's not really true anymore. I don't agree. Any electronic data ultimately on some physical storage medium, and all such electronic storage media are either poor or unproven long-term storage devices. All electronic file media and formats also require particular HW and SW to decode, and the lifespan of formats/media and the equipment to read them is very short (typically a decade or less.) Electronic storage is okay if you keep it fresh year after year after decade after decade (on the "well-maintained webserver" of which you speak, for example). But that puts you on a treadmill you can never get off. Say the LOC lets things slide for a few years after the depression of 2025... and the server hosting the rarely-accessed Rush Limbaugh collection crashes... and the backup is left in a basement in the aging Deluxo-XML format, on the obsolete Super-Memory-Stick medium... Stuff along those lines actually happens quite frequently. Paper has its own weaknesses (e.g. a good hot fire), but you can safely leave it alone for decades. Wide accessibility is nice, but for archival preservation over the next hundred years or so, paper is probably a safer bet than electronic.
Actually, digital formats aren't necessarily better for preservation. Printed material can survive for hundreds of years, particularly if good paper is used (and academic librarians pressure publishers to use such papers). Electronic formats can become unreadable in a few years because 1) the physical medium can be unstable (e.g. magnetic tape deteriorates quite quickly), or 2) the medium or data format can become obsolete (e.g. 5.25" floppy disks). Formats can be converted, but this can be an expensive and problematic process; furthermore, if conversion isn't done in a timely manner the window of opportunity may pass. Ten years from now it is going to be damn hard to get the data off those 5.25" floppies (just like its damn hard to get data off those really old 8" floppies today.) Librarians and archivists have of course given these types of issues lots of thought. The consensus seems to be that media readable by the eye (paper, microfilm etc.) are the safest bet for long-term preservation.
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I have to disagree with the premise that the Net has brought a lot of innovations to the form of the novel. So what if House of Leaves prints pages upside down, etc: that sort of play has been done at least since Sterne wrote Tristram Shandy in 1760 and did things like insert an entirely black page after the death of a character. I also disagree that publishing houses are so hierarchical and controlling. Book publishing actually puts a lot of control in the author's hands, particularly when it comes to content. Books are mostly written by individuals and there isn't a lot of heavy-handed editorial control of that content (for one thing, no one wants to pay for that editorial process). Publishers are also fairly willing to try different kinds of content, as long as they think a book might be the Next Big Thing. If anyone disagrees with the last paragraph, compare the book industry to the music industry. Artistic content is massaged much more heavily in the music industry; the company participates in the recording and production process where the final artistic product is created. And commercial music has much tighter and more restrictive genres than book publishing. Maybe book publishing isn't an absolutely open process, but it is relatively open compared to other forms of commercialized art. To contradict my subject line, I'll add that I think the Net has brought some writing innovations. The obvious one is email. RFC is also pretty cool.
Finally some insight after all the "Do it in MySQL in 15 minutes" drivel.
>Umm..that's not really true anymore. I don't agree. Any electronic data ultimately on some physical storage medium, and all such electronic storage media are either poor or unproven long-term storage devices. All electronic file media and formats also require particular HW and SW to decode, and the lifespan of formats/media and the equipment to read them is very short (typically a decade or less.) Electronic storage is okay if you keep it fresh year after year after decade after decade (on the "well-maintained webserver" of which you speak, for example). But that puts you on a treadmill you can never get off. Say the LOC lets things slide for a few years after the depression of 2025 ... and the server hosting the rarely-accessed Rush Limbaugh collection crashes ... and the backup is left in a basement in the aging Deluxo-XML format, on the obsolete Super-Memory-Stick medium ... Stuff along those lines actually happens quite frequently. Paper has its own weaknesses (e.g. a good hot fire), but you can safely leave it alone for decades. Wide accessibility is nice, but for archival preservation over the next hundred years or so, paper is probably a safer bet than electronic.
Actually, digital formats aren't necessarily better for preservation. Printed material can survive for hundreds of years, particularly if good paper is used (and academic librarians pressure publishers to use such papers). Electronic formats can become unreadable in a few years because 1) the physical medium can be unstable (e.g. magnetic tape deteriorates quite quickly), or 2) the medium or data format can become obsolete (e.g. 5.25" floppy disks). Formats can be converted, but this can be an expensive and problematic process; furthermore, if conversion isn't done in a timely manner the window of opportunity may pass. Ten years from now it is going to be damn hard to get the data off those 5.25" floppies (just like its damn hard to get data off those really old 8" floppies today.) Librarians and archivists have of course given these types of issues lots of thought. The consensus seems to be that media readable by the eye (paper, microfilm etc.) are the safest bet for long-term preservation.