Excerpt from Roger Chartier interview published on Thursday 25 September at La Voz del Interior, the opinion that the digital revolution is the deepest in the history of culture. interview Carlos Schilling
The three levels of the digital revolution
- What continuities and ruptures which is between the digital readout display, as is possible thanks to the Internet and the traditional book?
- I think there are more breaks that continuity. For me, the break bottom line is that for the first time changes occur simultaneously art reproduction of texts in the registration form of texts, support, and practice reading. As I said elsewhere, the revolution of an item does not imply the other. When Gutenberg invented the printing press was a revolution in the technique of reproduction of texts, but the morphological structure of the book is the same before and after Gutenberg. Before, from the ages II, III and VI of the Christian era until now, manuscript or printed, is an object that is built with notebooks, paper and bound pages, and there is a morphological continuity of the object which is like the backdrop of a technological invention. But it seems that in the digital world, the new registration form on a new medium-the computer screen, is in keeping with the new technology of composition, transmission and dissemination of texts, and new forms of reading, that are not new in themselves, because the display reading is fragmented, segmented and discontinuous, and the codex allowed the same kind of reading. The big difference that the mutation introduces digital reading level is that each of the previous objects support script materially established a relationship between the fragment and the whole segment. While front of the screen is an infinite universe or indomitable of all textual. So there is a revolution in the three levels (technological, morphological and cultural) that explain the impact, doubts or enthusiasm or fear from this new technology.
- Will it survive the book and practice reading and writing related to the role?
qualifies "What I'm saying now is that this revolution linked to the digital world is within the world in which print production and handwriting will continue as other forms of relationship with writing. All of this bet would be to know how each, depending of their age, occupation, economic resources, cultural competence, managed or not the relationship between his handwriting, reading printed texts, from books to newspapers, and the new world of production is written and read in front to the screen. That is the challenge of today.
