Postprint by N. Katherine Hayles
Rating 4 / 5 Stars
Published by Columbia University Press
Published On 17 November 2020

Thank you to Netgalley, Columbia University Press, and of course, N. Katherine Hayles, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The concept of print has evolved over time, having a large change as the digital atmosphere has developed. Books have changed in how they are composed, designed, distributed, sold and read and Hayles aims to investigate the interweaving of print and digital changes to books, language, authorship and what it means to be a reader and human.

I enjoyed this book! I took a while to read it, coming back to it from time to time. As someone who consumes books in multiple forms - print, ebook, audio - I found it intriguing to learn how this differs my consumption of some books. I recommend this, if you are intrigued by that

Things are changing in the world of books - and computers are the reason.

This idea is rather obvious, but I was curious as to what N. Katherine Hayles had to bring to the discussion in this exploration of recent changes in the production of books. How are things changing? What trends are there? What does this look like when you're in academia? Alas, I'm not sure "Postprint" really answered my questions, nor am I really persuaded by its arguments. However, as with most academic works, even when you disagree with the author's insights, there's still valuable information inside.

Since the chapters each discuss a different topic, I'll separate my own review by chapter, as well.

Chapter 1, "Introducing Postprint", introduces N. Katherine Hayles' definition of cognition: "Cognition is a process of interpreting information in contexts that connect it with meaning". Through this definition, she seeks to blur the line between humans and non-humans, arguing that all biological forms have cognition, and that machines increasingly have cognition, too.

I'm not sure I'm persuaded either by the definition, or its usefulness in this context.

By this definition, Hayles says computers also have cognition: "they process and interpret information, including information from sensors and actuators when these things are present, and they create meaning in the sense of performing behaviors that have efficacy within their environments".

Hmm.

First of all, I'm not sure what those "behaviors that have efficacy within their environments" really means. Computers are not efficient to themselves. I doubt whether my laptop cares whether it functions or bluescreens. I doubt whether anything of what they do has meaning to them - the user gives the results on the screen meaning.

And if an adequate response to input is the measure of cognition, then classic toilets likewise have cognition, although of a simpler fashion than a computer. Through a simple mechanical device, it allows water in the tank after flushing, then stops allowing water inside when the tank is refilled. The toilet itself, however, has no knowledge of fullness, sufficiency or overflowing.

While an ingenious mechanism that has changed our lives deeply, I'm not sure discussing the cognition of a toilet is a helpful framework. I'm likewise not sure that discussing the cognition of computers is helpful, either.

In "Postprint", N. Katherine Hayles goes a bit further: she calls a system wherein humans interact with cognitive machines a "cognitive assemblage". When you drive a car, she says, you are part of a cognitive assemblage: when you unlock, start and drive the car, you and the car collaborate to obtain the result of driving.

It's an interesting point of view, but I don't quite see the point of it. Hayles states that this influences the way we create and interact with books, but I feel that the rest of her book doesn't quite prove the framework - or take advantage of it.

Chapter 2, "Print Into Postprint", is a history of technology used to create books ever since typographers stopped arranging letters by hand.

It's interesting as a history of print - but I couldn't help but spot an inaccuracy in the part about recent developments - "once a text is stored as a binary file, it can be outputted as either alphanumeric symbols or as speech sounds". This is not how text-to-speech works. Binary code isn't helpful at all. You first need to make sure that code represents words, and then figure out what words it represents, in order to pair them up with their readings. English is not the sort of language where you can go around reading texts letter by letter - I doubt any language is, really.

It's a small thing - but it makes me wonder what else isn't quite accurate.

Chapter 3, "The Mixed Ecologies of University Presses", is quite interesting. Hayles interviewed people from four university presses about the current state of academic publishing. A few ideas: monography sales are going down; researchers use Google to discover relevant works (and tend to do what we do: stay on the first page of results); some universities are trying to develop projects that are both printed and online; young academics are trying to produce both traditional scholarly work, and friendly online work for the general public.

I think that there are a number of factors involved in what's going on, but Hayles doesn't go into depth about the causes, presenting summaries instead.

Chapters 4 and 5, "Postprint and Cognitive Contagion" and “Bookishness at the Limits: Resiting the Human”, (this is not a typo – it's “resiting”, not “resisting”) focus on fiction and art - namely, the interaction of technology and fiction.

I think there's an odd feedback loop between academia and high art: they're both in love with ideas and breaking ground, so art will try to challenge old ideas by using concepts from academia, while academia will latch onto the art for its demonstrations.

Chapter four is about books discussing losing language (either because of a virus affecting newly born children, who cannot form language at all; or because of dictionary implants causing people to lose their natural ability to find and use words), books that can only be read by using computers (and, alas, the discontinued Adobe Flash), or that cannot be read at all (imitating writing).

But do they say something about our current world? Hayles thinks so, but I think no. Or rather, I think you can find art that expresses anything you want it to express.

Still, if the point of the book is, “Humans reflect on the new possibilities and dangers of technology”, then these chapters fit right in.

All in all, it's an interesting book to start a discussion from, but not one that I feel stands very well on its own. I'm not entirely sure how the pieces of it are meant to work together, and it has an ephemeral quality to it, both because of discussing books that have died of tech failure (the Adobe Flash one), and because of referencing Trump's tweets and Biden's speech (in twenty years, will we still understand this?).

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.