“…but they don’t necessarily possess them” (11).

My first love has always been print. Regardless of my soft spot for all things digital, the unusually tactile feeling of a printed book, the ability to physically turn the pages, the ability to underline (my original sin) have always intrigued me. When I was studying English Literature as an undergraduate in Istanbul, I used to go to second-hand book stores where you can purchase books that are decades old for a relatively cheap price and I would spend hours looking at old editions of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and other classics. To me, these books told me stories that the new ones weren’t able to. Sometimes I read the margin notes made by the previous owners, sometimes old love letters would fall out of the book, and sometimes I look at what had been underlined. But whatever it was that would catch my attention, it was always the old book smell that intrigued me to the materiality of print.

Little did I know back then that the dissertation I was to write years later would investigate this very topic. In essence, my dissertation, The Business of Storytelling: Production of Works, Poaching Communities, and Creation of Story Worlds, looks at the production of works across media where I analyze the divergent ways the materiality of the medium affect the process of meaning-making and production of works that embody transmedial narratives. As such, my study inquires into how works become sites of struggle because the stories that they narrate are in a state of constant negotiation between its producers/creators, the medium of the work, and the communities that these works mobilize. But the cool thing is that I begin my investigation with Don Quixote and various other printed works before I lose myself in the wonders of the digital world.

Given this background, it should come as no surprise as to why I was fascinated by Ted Striphas’ new book entitled The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control. I maintain that it is a must-read for anyone who is interested in the print media, media ecology, or media studies in general. While I analyze the production and consumption of stories through the performative activities of reader/user/player, which in turn define the type of materiality that emerges, Striphas’ book looks at the production, distribution, and the consumption of works as physical artifacts and places book production at the center of consumer culture. (You can read what I–adopted by N. Katherine Hayles– mean by physicality and materiality here and here.)

Ultimately, Striphas investigates the everydayness of books that he claims is intimately bound with: “a changed and changing mode of production; new technological products and processes; shifts in law and jurisprudence; the proliferation of culture and the rise of cultural politics; and a host of sociological transformations” (5). His main argument is that books had been integral to the making of modern consumer culture in the 20th century, as they were one of the first commercial Christmas presents, and today are responsible in part for the fall of that consumer capitalism into a society of controlled consumption, a term which he borrows from Henri Lefebvre. He convincingly shows that book publishing pioneered the rationalization and standardization of mass-production techniques in that the massive quantities of book production required efficient production processes and the move toward an hourly wage. Ultimately, The Late Age of Print investigates how books have become ubiquitous social artifacts entrenched with the everyday. His book successfully proves that book circulation is, and has always been, a political act because the circulation of books embody specific values, practices, interests, and worldviews (13). And as such, similar to the production of stories investigated in my dissertation, practices of circulating books also embody struggles over particular ways of life.

What does this mean for the late age of print (a term coined by Jay David Bolter to characterize the current dynamic era of book history instigated by media convergence where books remain central to shaping dominant and emergent ways of life)? Well, for some, like Sven Birkerts, author of Gutenberg Elegies, this is a crisis, a decline in the quantity (and the quality) of literature being read and it poses a real threat to culture in general. I mean think about it, Amazon threatens to put the brick and mortar book stores out of business, Oprah’s book club defines literary taste, and Harry Potter franchise is strictly regulated by locking down upcoming books with binding contracts till their street date. Only a month ago, at the Media in Transition conference hosted by MIT, one of the panelist in The Future of Publishing keynote/panel, boldly said “Every time you buy from Amazon, you are killing a bookstore.” He later stated that (even though he had never used Amazon because of his strong distaste), online retailers sneak bestsellers into their suggestion lists to increase sales of these books. While this may be true for most online retailers, I never had one bestseller suggested to me by Amazon. This, to me, is similar to the anxiety that Birkerts shows when confronted with the failure of his class to enjoy or even understand Henry James.

Striphas explains (and I agree) that this is not a crisis in which familiar aspects of book culture is nearing its end, but rather, late age of print is a dynamic and open-ended era characterized by both permanence and change (175). He cites Elizabeth Eisenstein who contends that those who claim the end of print culture tend to do so by reinforcing modes of thought, conduct, and expression long associated with printed books.

In other words, indeed, this is a political act. It is the old way of life that is being threatened here. And by this I don’t just mean how we read, or that one type of textuality is appreciated over others or one type of work (printed books) is valued over others (blogs, videogames, virtual worlds). Explaining that to consume isn’t simply to use up, but to make do in unique and unexpected ways, Striphas focuses on how some of the defining attributes of consumer capitalism have been challenged by the emergence of a society of controlled consumption during the late age of print. While he discusses some of the creative ways in which consumers manage to appropriate (or make do) certain books (such as the Harry Potter franchise whose books leaked to the public despite the contractual agreement that the distributors had to agree), his book mainly focuses on how the society of controlled consumption plays out. Here are some of the defining characteristics of society of controlled consumption:

• possess an enormous infrastructure that manages key aspects of production, distribution, exchange, and consumption
• implement programming (how the product is released, consumed, and how long it is available, such as the self-erasing e-book Agrippa or Harry Potter delivery trucks, GPS devices, even contracts)/
• ensure obsolescence (works made to break, e-books that are rendered dysfunctional with outdated operating systems and/or hardware, online this may even mean that Web sites may be broken due to decrepit HTML syntax
• trouble, act on, reorganize specific practices of everyday life

So even though the consumers are given leeway to “make do” or appropriate the works that are being released, they are highly regulated or controlled. The boundaries of consumer initiated anything is strictly defined, though sometimes these boundaries are violated by eager consumers who figure out creatively how to trespass the enforced limitations. For example, although Agrippa was programmed to self-erase, the work was successfully hacked and its contents were posted online. But that didn’t mean that the work was experienced as it was meant to be experienced. In other words, the materiality of the work had been altered…

While my dissertation focused on how these limitations had been trespassed in societies of controlled consumption (Lonelygirl15 being one of the greatest examples), Striphas’ book emphasizes how they are being reinforced. This realization put my chair’s question during my defense into perspective. Regarding my Second Life chapter in which I discuss griefing she asked: “This is all good and well, and very interesting for sure, but does ‘playful activities’ or the “making do” initiatives always trump the activities of those in control of franchises/works?” Striphas’s book investigates these initiatives that control consumer initiatives that allow consumers to own the work.

The long and short of it is, is that on The Late Age of Print is a great read… And, this book made me realize, perhaps more poignantly, that I need to develop my own research towards investigating the society of controlled consumption even further.