alexander0's review against another edition
3.0
As a brief, well organized, poetic introduction to a (post?)structural notion of document, this is a great start! Even though this book is more than a decade old, it still holds up.
I had some qualms with the fact that the book centers very strongly around historic discourse and academic work related to the document and doesn't consider where the author's definitions might lead one to see a document being in more extreme cases. For example, the notion of document is very centered around being a product of a human, and necessarily a product that is a part of individual's consciousness, or is at least a part of an understood and intentionally designed process as a norm. I specifically see this as a limitation. In fact, the first chapter called "Meditation on a Receipt" could be replaced with a new first chapter or perhaps it could be followed by another called, "Meditation on a Meme" and discuss how norms could emerge through subconscious mimicry, and that would have reframed several later chapters.
Likewise, I had trouble with accepting the idea that only people create documents. If one is a scientist, specifically in a positivist or post-positivist tradition, one might argue that nature has its own documents. Or within a Spinozian or Deleuzian tradition that often action itself is experiencing the world in order to create communication or a language with nature, which thereby IS, by Levy's definition, nature speaking through its systematic existence. If that is true, then nature contains documents, that admittedly are still understood through human translation, but are not themselves grounded on any closed group of individuals' cognition. Rather it is grounded on the common affects created by that non-human body.
I had some qualms with the fact that the book centers very strongly around historic discourse and academic work related to the document and doesn't consider where the author's definitions might lead one to see a document being in more extreme cases. For example, the notion of document is very centered around being a product of a human, and necessarily a product that is a part of individual's consciousness, or is at least a part of an understood and intentionally designed process as a norm. I specifically see this as a limitation. In fact, the first chapter called "Meditation on a Receipt" could be replaced with a new first chapter or perhaps it could be followed by another called, "Meditation on a Meme" and discuss how norms could emerge through subconscious mimicry, and that would have reframed several later chapters.
Likewise, I had trouble with accepting the idea that only people create documents. If one is a scientist, specifically in a positivist or post-positivist tradition, one might argue that nature has its own documents. Or within a Spinozian or Deleuzian tradition that often action itself is experiencing the world in order to create communication or a language with nature, which thereby IS, by Levy's definition, nature speaking through its systematic existence. If that is true, then nature contains documents, that admittedly are still understood through human translation, but are not themselves grounded on any closed group of individuals' cognition. Rather it is grounded on the common affects created by that non-human body.
drmarti's review against another edition
3.0
This is well-researched and readable. Even though it's now 15 years old, it doesn't feel dated. And it brings together many topics I'm interested in: book history, reading practices, information science, bureaucratization, literary history, and bibliography. My only quibble, I guess, is that I've encountered all of these subjects before, and this book didn't really add anything new for me. I preferred reading another book in a similar vein, James Gleick's The Information. But for others less familiar with the topics covered, it would be a great overview.
mlindner's review against another edition
3.0
Read 25 Sep-24 Nov 2009. Pretty good but read at work during breaks so the author’s point was kind of too spread out for me. Instead, I recommend Avatars of the Word.
pussreboots's review against another edition
2.0
Link+ due 4/13
An interesting exploration of what documents are in the early days of ebooks and the world wide web. Sadly it's rather out of date in places.
An interesting exploration of what documents are in the early days of ebooks and the world wide web. Sadly it's rather out of date in places.
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