A Report on the Symposium Organized and Hosted at RIT

June 9–12, 2010

by David Pankow

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A conference report by David Pankow

ThematicOverviewThis three-day symposium was organized around a central question: How might reading change in the next decade? It featured provocative and challeng-ing presentations by prominent authors, publishers, experts in writing systems and typography, media theorists, vision and cognition scientists, knowledge brokers, and display technologists.

The conference began with the premise that no process is more firmly embedded in our culture as an agent of information exchange than reading. Nonetheless, the development of new technologies, the democratization of publishing, and the ubiqui-tous presence of visual media threaten to overwhelm the subtle pleasures and necessary disciplines that have characterized traditional reading. Today’s information economy is driven by short attention spans and the expectation of immediate reward. Evolving technologies and habits of information exchange have profound effects on how societies (their thinkers, writers, scientists, and citizens) envi-sion, create, articulate, distribute, absorb, remember, and assimilate content. Commercial competition and technical innovation, as well as the perpetual desire to create and share, continually reshape the

information systems on which reading depends: the private act of writing, the interpretive act of typogra-phy, and the social act of publishing.

This conference was designed to explore where new modes of reading will take us in the coming decade, and how they will affect us—socially, politically, economically, and aesthetically. One measure of the anticipation this event elicited among participants appeared in the following post to the conference website:

Reading, Distraction, and Immersion: This topic is at the core of the storm in electronic literature, and I’m glad to see it aired here. In this new age, both reading as an individual activity and learning as a social and individual process are in mid-leap from sequential presentation to parallel or gestalt presentation. We are struggling with this revolutionary transition. As an author trying to join the flow of narration in word, image, and process. I’m looking forward eagerly to this conference and the deeply social, collaborative, and synergistic interactions it should nurture. —Dana Paxson

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After this auspicious beginning, conference participants settled in for the next three days, ready to engage a series of formal presentations focused on a different theme each day, as follows: 1. Reading & Writing 2. Media & Technology 3. Science & the Art of Literacy

Each morning and afternoon began in Ingle Auditorium with a pair of formal speaker presenta-tions, followed by moderated question-and-answer sessions. At the conclusion of the afternoon sessions in Ingle, participants were encouraged to spend the rest of the day exploring a large selection of interac-tive events and presentations located in multiple campus venues.

The conference began Wednesday evening, June 9th, with a mesmerizing talk by the author Margaret Atwood. She spoke of her early enthusiasm for read-ing, sparked by a love of the “funny papers.” She also talked about the intersections of authorship, publishing, and reading, as well as the future of the written word in a digital world. Atwood suggested that children be encouraged to read what they want in order to nourish their sense of choice, instead of always being steered toward some accepted canon of literature. Her talk focused on the essentials of authorship and in the unique experience that char-acterizes every interaction between book and reader.

A lively question-and-answer period was followed by a reception and book signing in the Fireside Lounge.

Margaret Atwood in the Cary Collection, musing on the future of e-book readers. Photo: A. Sue Weisler.

AnEveningwithMargaretAtwood

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ReadingandWriting

Chris Anderson, Wired MagazineTablets and the Future of MediaAnderson followed with a frankly practical analysis of the opportunities that new tablet e-readers offer to magazine publishers. In particular he focused on his disappointment with the web delivery of content for Wired, preferring instead the carefully designed rich media experience and sophisticated user interface that Apple’s recently introduced iPad now offered. He demonstrated the new Wired app for the iPad, and discussed the unique design challenges a rotat-able screen orientation presented.

SummaryAnderson and Drucker discovered some common ground, since they both saw themselves ultimately as creators, but each had distinctly different views about whether or not digital content is at risk of being locked up by proprietary software or publishing practices and imperatives. The pairing of academics with practitioners from the business world was deliberate, but the startling relevance and creative tensions this brought out during the conference became increasingly apparent with each new session.

SummaryParticipants enjoyed the ensuing dialogue between the two speakers regarding authorship, literary standards, and the tensions between those who advocate for strongly mediated content and those who enjoy the greater freedom and spontaneity of collaborative publishing.

Amit Ray, ritDecoding Babel: Emerging Dimensions of Language, Power and Translation on WikipediaProfessor Ray’s recent research has been focused on the nature of collaborative writing and its expres-sion on the Web through multi-author-mediated enterprises like Wikipedia. The cross-cultural op-portunities such authorship makes possible have transformed how information is presented, edited, moderated, and absorbed.

Molly Barton, Penguin Group, USA Amplification v. Distraction: Penguin’s Ventures Beyond the Book and Past the PageAs manager of e-initiatives at Penguin usa, Molly Barton has discussed how this famous publishing brand is navigating its way from familiar tradi-tional print models into a new digital dissemination universe. With its extensive backlist and impressive ability to maintain customer loyalty, Penguin is carefully looking at ways to provide literary content with new features through its Enriched Classics e-book series, without interfering with the essential relationship that needs to exist between author and reader.

Johanna Drucker, uclaFrame Jumps and Mixed Modalities Professor Drucker focused on how readers navigate and experience content on digital platforms largely situated on the Web. Understanding the decisions and cognitive processes by which readers move through sites— where they pay attention to some, while filtering out others—is essential to under-standing how information and entertainment archi-tectures based on the “frame” influence the paths we take through content. As in a traditional book, the journey is still a unique journey, but no longer linear.

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Richard Lanham, UCLAA Multimedia IncunabulumProfessor Lanham introduced the audience to an innovative teaching tool he had created in the 1980s called “Revising Prose Video.” Employing color, narration, motion, and graphics, the video prefigured many of the techniques now standard in multimedia learning. It was widely used throughout the University of California system and was espe-cially effective in transforming an ordinarily tedious subject for students into an engaging experience. Lanham asked for feedback on the video’s continu-ing relevance and suggested that he would welcome help in revising it for contemporary technology.

Media&Technology

SummaryLanham’s whole career has been focused on the structure of the English sentence written clearly and elegantly, while Google is attempting to parse the sum of human published knowledge. Though the scales of their respective enterprises are vastly different, both saw their work as improving society. In a follow-up survey, many participants singled out Lanham and Orwant as among their favorites.

Orwant and Lanham during their Q&A discussion.Photo: A. Sue Weisler

Jon Orwant, GOOGLEGoogle BooksThis eagerly anticipated talk featured the individual most responsible for Google’s enormous book digitization and access enterprise. In a frank and fascinating talk, Orwant discussed the challenges of converting millions of legacy documents into digital form, the difficulties of building reliable search algorithms, and the legal thickets that surround the distribution of materials with ambiguous or un-known copyright histories. He also tried to dispel concerns that Google was privatizing knowledge in ways that inhibited the future circulations of ideas and information.

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SummaryAt no time during the conference was it more clear how differently the academic world functions in comparison to the commercial. Friedman pointed out that while she admired the work of Hayles and the theoretical elegance of her research, her own mission was to ensure her company’s future by bringing in revenue. Both speakers agreed that literary content was moving quickly toward digital delivery.

The inside front cover and end paper of Only Revolutions, an innovative book by Mark Danielewski.

N. Katherine Hayles, Duke UniversityHyper Reading: Pattern vs. Meaning This was perhaps the most deeply theoretical talk of the conference. Hayles presented the results of some of her research into hyper-reading, that is, the kind of information absorption techniques we employ when navigating multi-linked websites, or searching for one relevant piece of data in a large data set. In particular, she concentrated on the work of Mark Danielewski, whose published books House of Leaves and Only Revolutions represent an attempt to deconstruct the traditional literary structure of the novel using techniques that parallel multi-nodal, screen-based reading.

Jane Friedman, Open Road Integrated MediaChanges in PublishingFriedman brought the audience back from its im-mersion in the heuristics of the digital humanties to the real challenges that commercial publishers face today. She introduced the concept behind her new company Open Road Media and its strategy for obtaining e-book rights to important works of twentieth-century literature. She also showed several documentary videos about Open Road authors that emphasized their continuing relevance to readers today. Most importantly, she suggested that publish-ers need to fully embrace the possibilities of new technologies of dissemination.

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Kris Holmes, Bigelow & HolmesThe Radical HandThe fundamental building blocks of reading are let-terforms. Their history is complex and richly graphic. Kris Holmes discussed the tension between the need for legibility and efficiency vs. the desire to let letters, words, and sentences develop their own rhythms and visual identities. As screen reading begins to dominate our lives, we need to remember that the lively letterforms and unconventional typographic arrangements made by the “radical hand” offer relief from utilitarian web-safe types and remind us that reading can be a pleasurable journey visually as well as intellectually.

Science&TheArtofLiteracy

SummaryThis pairing of speakers showed how remarkably creative language and its graphic counterparts are. They demonstrated the seemingly infinite design possibilities that lie under the grammatical structures and conventions of the recorded word, always ready to evolve and respond to the changing demands of the societies that read those words.

Dennis Tedlock, Suny BuffaloSound and Image in Mayan WritingThis talk vividly illustrated that there have been many successful writing (and reading) systems in history. The Mayan script is a particularly good example of a writing system that was far more sophisticated and nuanced than we have believed. Developing completely independently from west-ern and Asian systems, Mayan’s visually arresting glyphs and complex orthography offered its users a range of possibilities ranging from monumental stone-carved dynastic histories to works of science and literature on paper.

One of the slides from Kris Holmes’ presentation. This famous and striking manuscript is known as the Nurse’s Koran. It was endowed to the Great Mosque of Kairouan in Ramadan 410/January 1020.

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SummaryScience and philosophy are not so very far apart, and these two talks illustrated how the objective study of the physiology of reading and cognition, and the uniquely personal and transformative experience of reading, suggest an undeniable conclusion: good texts will endure, the shapes of letterforms and their typographic arrangement do matter, and reading does indeed have a hopeful future.

Dennis Pelli, New York UniversityThe Role of Vision in ReadingSuccessful reading, and by extension literacy, is based on the accurate and efficient recognition of characters, words, and phrases. Dr. Pelli discussed his research into the mechanisms by which the human eye scans streams of words, then images them on the retina. The relative success of this pro-cess is influenced by letterform size and the hori-zontal or peripheral limits of character recognition. Vision science will have important contributions to make in the design of effective reading devices for the future.

Robert Bringhurst, AuthorWhat is Reading For?This was the last conference talk and had two purposes: 1) to synthesize and summarize the most significant points of previous presentations, and 2) to offer some reflections on the nature, purposes, and meaning of reading today. Dense and rich—and therefore a talk that many who heard it wanted to return to—Bringhurst’s presentation proved that we absorb information and meaning by different means, including speech, gesture, and immersive reading. This carefully prepared talk will soon be available as a separate monograph for those who wish to under-stand it more deeply.

On of the slides from Dennis Tedlock’s presentation showing his three-dimensional re-creation of a Mayan inscription.

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School of Print Media Graduate Student, Garret Voorhees, leads an interactive session on designing books for the Apple iPad.

InteractiveSessionsFollowing the plenary presentations in Ingle Auditorium, symposium attendees were invited to break out into a variety of interactive sessions, held in various locations across campus. The program included 27 different activities that ranged from formal lectures and panel discussions to hands-on workshops, tours, and computer-assisted learning opportunities.

Forty-four presenters, representing diverse areas within the RIT community, led the sessions, including: faculty members from the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences (Design, Photography, and Print Media programs), the College of Liberal Arts, and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf; librarians and technology experts from The Wallace Center; staff from RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press; RIT graduate students; numerous guest speakers (including RIT alumni) from prominent technology leaders (Microsoft, Monotype Imaging, Ascender Fonts, and Kirtas Technologies); and special guests Lella and Massimo Vignelli.

Interactive session faculty brought a rich mix of aca-demic and industry expertise to their sessions, which examined everything from historic letterforms to e-book design. For example, the Vignelli’s led a study session—“Bodoni: Reflections on a Classic Typeface”—in the Cary Collection on the great Italian type designer Giambattista Bodoni’s 19th- century books and their relevance to contemporary typographic practice.

Several sessions examined current trends in e-books and e-readers, including “Social Reading and the eBook Ecosystem,” “The Power of e-Books,” and “Getting to e-Pub—A Circuitous Path.” The typo-graphic possibilities and learning opportunities of reading on non-print platforms was discussed in “Designing a New Reading Experience on the iPad,” “The Next Generation Learning Solution,” and “A Qualitative Study of Future High Value News Media Audiences.” Participants also enjoyed many hands-on sessions such as creating color poetry from paint-chip samples, learning some simple bookbind-ing structures, and trying their calligraphic hands in large-scale strokes on wall murals.

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BackchannelCommunicationOne of the aims of this conference was to help participants and speakers coalesce into a commu-nity who could freely engage in dialogue on many different levels, including real-time digital com-mentary during and after presentations. To that end, Professor Amit Ray and his student assistant Derin Korman, designed and set up a social media site that contained descriptions of each talk along with mechanisms for posting comments through Twitter. Rather than discourage audience members from using laptops during presentations, confer-ence organizers urged them to contribute to this site, thereby enabling a running stream of observations, questions, references, and potential questions for the panel discussions that followed each pair of speakers At first, the use of social media was tentative, as par-ticipants logged in and familiarized themselves with the site. By the afternoon of the first day, there was a regular patter of interesting conversation taking place. “Backchannel” communications like this are increasingly common at conferences in the digital humanities and technology, since they encourage involvement and enrich understanding.

A detail from the Future of Reading social media website.

Feedback from interactive session attendees was positive and constructive:

• The calligraphy session: “…very well run and thought provoking and fun!”

• The Bodoni session: “It was absolutely the greatest thing to see David Pankow present books from the collection for Massimo’s comments.”

• The Open Publishing Guide Session: “It was a very informative and well put together presentation.”

• The committee received many suggestions for future symposia, including:• Stagger the session programming so

participants did not have to choose between equally appealing events.

• Make each class shorter, so participants could explore more of the many stimulating topics offered each day.

• New Technologies for Photo Reproduction in the Printing Applications Laboratory: “...where they described how the mother/daughter book was made, was excellent.”

Interactive Session summary courtesy of Amelia Hugill-Fontanel.

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PublicityThe Future of Reading conference might well have been delayed until 2011 had it not been for the realization that 2010 was going to be a transformative year for readers. The decision to move forward was catalyzed by the sudden, extraordinary attention that the publishing industry was receiving as it coped with dramatic changes in technology and ways of doing business. In addition, the effectiveness of reading in a digital environment was also being fiercely debated, as many new e-reader devices began to reach the market, including Apple’s iPad.

Conference organizers wanted to take advantage of that attention and decided to move forward with a 2010 date, with program planning beginning in the Fall of 2009. Speakers were identified from relevant disciplines, and a conference website was established. Funding efforts were also initiated, and a broad marketing campaign was designed that concentrated however, on e-mail lists, e-news-letters of relevant organizations, and appropriate websites, including the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP),

the Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI), the American Printing History Association (APHA), Publishers Lunch (a much-read industry digest), Shelf Awareness (representing independent bookstores), and many more publishing, library, and technology-related outlets. In addition, print advertising was placed in the New York Review of Books, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and local Rochester newspapers (including City Newspaper and the Democrat & Chronicle). A strikingly vivid poster, designed by Bruce Meader, faculty member in the School of Graphic Design, was printed at RIT in the Printing Applications Lab and circulated and/or mailed to local distribution sites, bookstores, and university libraries. In the last week before the con-ference began, a series of radio spots was aired on the local public radio station WXXI.

Both City Newspaper and the D&C interviewed organizers and published long preview articles about the conference; an op-ed piece was written by two of the organizers and published in the D&C; and another member of the planning committee was interviewed by local radio personality Bob Smith.

Feature cover image from the City Newspaper, June 1, 2010.

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FeedbackThe feedback from conference participants and speakers has been extraordinarily positive, and there have been many calls to formalize the conference as a repeating biannual event. A post-conference survey was sent to all participants and the results have been gratifying and illuminating. Comments included:

Organization• 1) Beautiful campus, 2) friendly people,

3) good shuttle service, 4) well organized conference, … best of all, conference presented a variety of ideas so it had wide appeal.

• The organization of everything was great. Very professionally executed.

• Logistics were handled well. The central SAU location for eating and main presentations was effectively contrasted by the ‘campus-wide’ Interactive Sessions. It was good to get out and move about the campus a little.

• The entire event was extremely well organized. In spite of a quite complex structure in every day events, timing was perfect. When problems arose, help was immediately available. Well done conference.

Johanna Drucker (currently Breslauer Professor, Department of Information Science, UCLA) appeared as the conference’s first speaker. Photo: A. Sue Weisler

Speakers• I found Dennis Pelli and Kathryn Hayles most

surprising, and Amit Ray and Johanna Drucker were excellent as well.

• Chris Anderson, Wired; Google; Pelli & Bringhurst; Atwood; Ray & Barton; Should I list them all? Everyone had a vital core of info and insight on their topics.

• I attended most of the presentations and they were all great—very engaging presenters and very thought provoking presentations.

• All the Main Presentations were interesting and engaging. Of special note to me were Margaret Atwood, Johanna Drucker/Chris Anderson, Richard Lanham/Jon Orwant.

Main Presentations• I loved the balance between the academic and

“real world” presentations. The Q&A sessions were great.

• I like how there was a wide range of avenues in the future of reading covered. Each day was a different topic to be discussed, and the speakers covered this well.

• The main speakers represented a wide spectrum of folks who were really very interesting all the way around.

• They were all excellent, lively and informative. I’ve seldom been to a conference of such consistent high quality.

Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine. He was a favorite speaker among participants.Photo: A. Sue Weisler

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Massimo and Lella Vignelli in the Cary Collection, reflecting on 18th-century masterworks by Giambattista Bodoni.

DisseminationThe full schedule of primary presentations and interactive sessions is still available for review at the conference website (futureofreading.cias.rit.edu). In addition, a mechanism will be established for on-line access to the videotaped presentations; in this way, a broad spectrum of conference activi-ties can be revisited by participants and enjoyed by those who could not attend. Many respondents to the survey agreed that a printed proceedings would be useful and welcome. The planning committee will carefully consider this possibility, but it is clear at the outset that preparing a full-scale proceedings would entail significant work, since many of the presentations were delivered extemporaneously and might lose some of their immediacy and candor if presenters were asked to submit written versions. At the very least, the final talk by Robert Bringhurst will be published in a fine, limited letterpress edition. This project is already well underway, and copies will be available for distribution before the year is out.

What did you like most about FoR?• Diversity of speakers, warm and inviting areas

for talking between sessions, never feeling “rushed” from one event to another. The open seating at meals was a good way to get to know new people. The technical crew was excellent and kept the conference and presentations running smoothly.

• The sessions provoked so much conversation among the participants, it was one of the best conferences I have attended.

• You got more than what you paid for. Extensive speakers who were pioneers in their field provided a higher level for the viewer.

• I appreciated all of the receptions and the banquet. I have never been to a conference like FoR which addressed my personal, professional, and academic interests.

It was clear that RIT’s diversity of disciplines in the humanities, graphic arts, and multiplicity of digital technologies make this institution an ideal setting for conversations about the future of reading, the future of the book, and indeed, the future of the author-reader relationship. Which is to say: the teaching and learning process itself.

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SymposiumContributors

Planning SymposiumCommittee PresentersCharles Bigelow Chris AndersonAmelia Hugill-Fontanel Margaret AtwoodDavid Pankow Molly Barton Amit Ray Robert BringhurstPatricia Sorce Johanna Drucker Jane Friedman N. Katherine Hayles Kris Holmes Richard Lanham Jon Orwant Denis Pelli Amit Ray Dennis Tedlock

InteractiveSessionsPresentersMargaret Bartlett Scott McCarneyDavid Berlow Chandra McKenzieMatthew Bernius Susan MeeCharles Bigelow Joan NaturaleMarcia Birken David PankowAdwoa Boateng Jeremiah Parry-HillShirley Bower Kevin RattiganPamela Conley R. Roger RemingtonAnne Coon Tom RicknerMolly Cort Jessica RiderLorrie Frear Michael RiordanRachael Gootnick Laura SchackelfordKris Holmes Becky SimmonsKari Horowicz Marnie SoomAmelia Hugill-Fontanel Patricia SorceLinette Koren Michael StarenkoKamal Mansour Jeremy VansletteDavid Martins Lella VignelliSteve Matteson Massimo VignelliXanthe Matychak Howard VoglMichael Maxwell Garret Voorhees

VolunteersJessica ColesLiz DoppLisa DeRomanisDealva Jade Dowd-HinkleDaniel HorowitzJenna NicholsAnna RaugalisMariela RodriguezJody SidlauskasArianna ValentiniHaizhen Zhang

FutureProspectsIt is likely that a follow-up conference will take place in 2012, when the School of Print Media celebrates its 75th anniversary. The planning committee is strongly committed to designing another multi-dis-ciplinary event and will seek sponsorship and pro-gramming advice from TWC, the College of Liberal Arts, CIAS, and any other college and departments at RIT interested in any aspect of reading and the future of publishing. It is too early to identify spe-cific themes and conference topics, but these are sure to emerge as technologies continue to evolve and society adapts and explores the emerging frontiers.

FinancialReviewThe conference was organized and sponsored by representatives from the RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press and Cary Collection (David Pankow and Amelia Hugill-Fontanel), The School of Print Media (Pat Sorce, Chair, and Chuck Bigelow, Cary Professor), and the RIT Department of English (Amit Ray, professor). Each of these departments or entities also provided significant financial spon-sorship, as well. RIT’s new Vignelli Design Center contributed graphics and sponsored one of the conference’s featured speakers, Massimo Vignelli. In addition, generous subsidies from the Provost’s office and The Wallace Center, as well as a generous grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation further helped to underwrite the costs of the confer-ence. A number of other RIT departments covered admission costs for faculty members who wished to attend.

The aim of this conference was to bring the best minds together to discuss a leading topic of the day. The structure of the event and its wide array of features were experimental to a degree, and there was no certain way to gauge potential attendance. In the end, the target number of 300 attendees was nearly met, and there is every reason to believe that the 2012 conference will attract a larger number. We are grateful to all the individuals (speakers, partici-pants, staff, volunteers, and students) who made this conference such a resounding success.

Set in Minion and Univers typefaces, and produced in an edition of 50 copies by the RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection. Designed by Jenna Nichols, August 2010.

A good reader is rarer than a good writer.jorge luis borges

I do not read a book: I hold a conversation with the author.elbert hubbard

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in turn speak of things.umberto eco