Frank Is on a Scroll

Frank pontificates about how we will see and interact with information as we move into the future. He goes from ancient scrolls, to the book, to the screen. How will information be presented in the future—and is there a future for text in the electronic age?

Published on April 23, 2021

Discussion

By Carlos Silgado on Apr 23, 2021

What a quick overview of the ways we have accessed text historically and yes, Frank, who knows if we end up going back to the scrolls!

By Dov Isaacs on Apr 23, 2021

Whether a “scroll” was horizontal or vertical really depended upon the subject matter.

The scroll that Frank showed looked like a miniature (children's edition) of a Torah scroll which of course is horizontal. Why? It is quite long, organized in columns within the scroll, and typically read on a table.

Vertical scrolls were typically used for announcements / proclamations within a single column that could be held by hand while being read.

That being said, I doubt whether we will be going back to scrolls even if we still refer to “horizontal scrolling” and “vertical scrolling” when dealing with content on screens, especially with screens that are relatively small.

By Eric Vessels on Apr 26, 2021

Some post-book innovations that I can think of are the audiobook which enabled you to take in the information of a book without actually having to read it and the hyperlink which enable you to hop from "book to book" in a digital environment.

I'm often struck with how fixated we become on a given format and how we tend to replicate that format within technologies that don't necessarily require it.