Updated: 06 Jan 2012

What Comes After a Million Penguins? Digerati Talk on the Technological Future of the Book

7th March 2007

Radical member of the digerati, Bob Stein, Director of the Institute of the Future of the Book, will give a free public seminar at De Montfort University in Leicester next week.

Hosted by the University's pioneering Institute of Creative Technologies, the talk will offer a rare UK opportunity to hear directly from Stein, who is recognised as one of the leading thinkers in writing and technology and member of the cyber elite.

His talk, 'Reading and Writing in the Networked Era', will warn of the risks to society of rapidly changing technology, as well as its possibilities, and will be given on Tuesday 17 March, 5-6pm.

Stein said: "Publishing, methods of distribution, peer review and copyright - every crucial aspect of the way we move ideas around - is up for grabs. The new digital technologies afford vastly different outcomes ranging from oppressive to liberating. How we make this shift has critical long term implications for human society.

"For the past several hundred years intellectual discourse has been shaped by the rhythms and hierarchies inherent in the nature of print. As discourse shifts from page to screen, and more significantly to a networked environment, the old definitions and relations are undergoing unimagined changes.

"The shift in our world view from individual to network holds the promise of a radical reconfiguration in culture. Notions of authority are being challenged. The roles of author and reader are morphing and blurring."

This seminar is organised by the Production and Research in Transliteracy (PART) group at De Montfort University, headed by Prof Sue Thomas.

Prof Thomas leads the University's new Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media which recently collaborated with Penguin Books to run the first ever wiki novel project which drew attention from the literary world around the globe.

"For those who have been following the saga of A Million Penguins wiki novel, this is a great opportunity to come along and hear more about the changes happening to the ways we read and write from someone who has been working in this area for many years. You can also post your thoughts on the IOCT blog - we hope you will!" said Prof Thomas.

To discuss these issues, visit the IOCT Blog www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk/wp/. To attend the event, which is free and open to the public, see directions for the IOCT at www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk.

For further information or to be kept informed about IOCT activities, please contact:
The Director, Institute of Creative Technologies,
De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH
Tel: (+44) 0116 250 6146
Email: eedmonds [at] dmu.ac.uk
www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk

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