When new technologies emerge, they tend to be used to
perform old tasks but in slightly new ways. After a while it becomes apparent
that one can extend this and do entirely new things. The digital revolution is so recent that it is only now becoming
obvious that it is making new kinds of communication possible. I have become
aware of this as an academic who spent the first thirty years of his career
publishing hard-back books through conventional publishing presses, but now in
his retirement can think about creating entities which are very different from
what I could have imagined even five years ago. Let me illustrate with my own
current work.
I have inherited many boxes of family papers on the history
of my family since the seventeenth century. I have also not thrown away much
since I was about sixteen. Consequently, as I sit down to write a biography of
the British Empire, and an autobiography of myself, I am faced with a dilemma
which previously would have been insurmountable. There is so much material that it could be turned into
dozens of books. But these are books which no commercial publisher could
venture to publish. And the readership of these books is scattered around the
world, so that most people who are potentially interested would never find them
in an English or American bookshop.
The advent of the digital world resolves these problems
quite simply. One looks at the book as one part of the publication. Behind the
shorter analytic work, one can put up a website with the scanned documents,
indexed full transcripts, photographs, films and other materials. So those who
want to go into depth can do so. The original papers, meanwhile, cane be made
available from archives. Thus it is possible to think of layers of
communication, with the book as just one layer in a multi-media project.
Secondly, the publication itself can now be made flexible
and the up-front costs of conventional publishing are diminished so much that
an author can write and publish the book they want to make available, at the
length and with the number of illustrations they like, without facing the
impossibility of commercial publishing, or the cost of ‘vanity’ publishing.
I have started on this process and it may be worth
illustrating part of what I mean by drawing attention to the publication of the
first part of this new venture (available on various publisher’s websites). The
Dragon Triptych, consists of three
books, totalling over 1100 pages with over 150 pages of illustrations,
concerning the life of two boys, myself and Jamie Bruce Lockhart, at a
preparatory boarding school 1950-5, and at home with their families. The books
are based on over 400 letters we wrote at the time, but only parts of these
letters and other documents can be used. The original materials will be
deposited in the Dragon School and University of Cambridge archives. The full
letters and scans will be made available as a database.
Forerunners of our project can be seen in the digital
databases and projects described on www.alanmacfarlane.com.
The important thing is to dream dreams, to imagine what is
not yet possible, and then have the delight of finding the technology catching
up with the dreams.
Alan Macfarlane.
