Assemblage

Conceptually the word 'Assemblage' means to gather everything together as a whole, to convey particular meaning to the public. In this process, it must involve actants to activate the performance in order to extend  further actions constantly. In other words, actants potentially cause repetitive making and re-making and eventually it comes to the final result after everything has done its job by adding certain effects. However, we cannot see how each of the actant induces the subsequent movement, only if we theorise this process, extracting the key elements from this involvement. Actor-network theory externalises this perspective and that reflects the networks of relation coherently and how this affects social relations.  

Theoretically, actants can be classfied as human and non-human actors, they both distribute partially during the production in this process. There is no such a difference when we talk about human factors and non human factors in this theory as they contribute, act, engage equally, the interaction has no hierarchy. That means, every factor virtually is a small component react and cause change to other components, to make up the whole complex system rather than competing against each other to create conflicts. 

The quote has taken from Wikipedia sums up the whole point:

ANT is often associated with the equal treatment of human and non-human actors. ANT assumes that all entities in a network can and should be described in the same terms. This is called the principle of generalized symmetry.

It's like a teamwork that things connect and exist or possibly dependent on each other, namely 'flat ontology'  

The other term 'Latour Litany' demonstrates the same semiotic meaning, it has taken from Bruno Latour's book, Politics of Nature. The central idea of the book implicitly conveys the same idea of the Actor-network theory. His book focuses on the creation of assemblies and collectives all around our nature and the very basis of our lives.

Other than that, according to Manuel DeLanda's theory, he suggested that all the matters are rational decisions made by individual persons in isolation from one another. Also each entity's capabilities are as real as its properties. 'Assemblage', in other words, constitutes by heterogenous lower-level assemblages. The theory advocates that entities always results in "populations", in a sense of forming a society. So when we use the term 'society', we are not talking about in a broader sense of totality, but it's considered to be the relations of all atomy is happening in any actual occasions. They are capable to produce temporality and spaciality and bounded to demonstrate 'flat ontology', this principle to higher level of realism. 

Interestingly, in my own understanding of the term 'assemblage' could be the patterns that carries an artistic value. To get rid of the boredom from reading so many texts, i searched for a few images to further analyse the core idea:

This image is appealing because it expresses further personal and human level of a larger social assemblages are made up of some small-scale units, the beauty of this image is subjectively becomes a plausible model emerges as an established distinct and separable sense impression once you look at it

This second image suggests a process of association from the formation of identical individuals, also it generates a sense of simplicity in the way of changing how each of the individual displays. In terms of assemblage, it relates back to the reflection on every entity equally powers up the entirety and that it leads to our attempt to neglect the details when we look at this image

The last image embodies the theory of 'Latour Litany' which is associated to the idea of each entity produces certain effect and its chaotic formation has an emphasis of the 'freedom' of every entity. So when we look at this image, we do notice all the eyeballs and each of their location as well as the shapes of different curves displaying in this image.

So when we see publishing as an assemblage, there are three layers should be included in this process which are: 

1. the invention of the printing press, materials are texts, images, painting etc
2. the advent technology influences enormous changes, such technological devices are ipad, ereaders etc actively updates a newer version of publishing 
3. following by the development of digital changes, publishing becomes more well known by a wider range of audience in different fields, hence we have a stronger intention to adapt to the new contents produced by new environments

The following video provides a further demonstration of the Actor-network theory, in brief, this system is an unbreakable chain that each actant intertwines one another.

References

Actor Network Theory’, Wikipedia,< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor-network_theory>

Actor-Network Rochambeau,<http://www.anyspacewhatever.com/actor-network-rochambeau/>

DeLanda, A New Philosophy of Society, The Pinocchio Theory,<http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=541>

the form of Alphabet

Once i was told the key word for this week's blog is alphabet, it soon dragged me back to what I have learnt in linguistics last year. 'Alphabet', as confusing as it sounds, then my second thought was to search for its connection with the lecture this week, by talking about publishing, alphabet is the core of understanding the texts for readers. Alphabet is everywhere in publishing, it conceptually constitutes the entirety by making the abstract sense to concrete sense of comprehension. In other words, publishing would be some meaningless symbols if nobody gets the code of alphabet.

Here comes with a quote 'the reader must learne the alphabet, to wit: the order of the letters as they stand' says by 1604 edition of an English dictionary 

Publishing is all dependent on writing, from the ancient age when it started from cave painting, which is already 32000 years old, the earliest form of print publishing to proper writing system. Anyhow, the writing system in publishing has gone through a long process of development. It was more sense of ideographic writing as below:

The picture-based writing could cause misunderstanding as it abstractedly conveys the meaning through an image, which may create different understanding when it comes to uncertainty of the picture for readers or we can say pictographs is non-specific to the text, the representation of the contexts could be varied for different readers.

another example would be Chinese, the whole system is evolved with pictographs that u have to remember what each character looks like and how that sounds:

Phonetic writing system was developed later on when alphabet started in ancient Egypt by 27th century BC Egyptian developed a set of 24 hieroglyphs. Hence, this invention generates more sense of consciousness for human to enjoy the literature. we can say alphabet is the primary element that makes a writing system alive. It generates the meaning and culturally transmit messages from one generation to the next. it becomes widely spread.

references

Eisenstein, E (1979) ‘Defining the Initial Shift: Some features of print culture’ in the Printing Press as an Agent of Change Vol 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 43-163

Brannon, B.A (2007) ‘The Laser Printer as an Agent of Change’ in Baron, Sabrina et al., (eds.) Agent of Change: Print Culture Studies after Elizabeth L. Eisenstein Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press: 353-364

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet

Ereaders

driven largely by growing ownership of devices that enable reading of e-books, Americans are migrating from old-school paper books to the electronic versions. Publishers and libraries are working to keep up with the Apples and Amazons of the world by expanding their e-book and technological offerings.

Brief introduction

The popularity of E-readers is an indication to the massive change of the publishing industry, following by the current rapid digital world development. However, it doesn't mean the printing method is becoming redundant, but it's just a way to shift to the newer method to more digital like, in which it's more convenient and appealing to the audience in terms of publishing. In other words, E-readers are essential to the publishing market as the culture evolves to the point of when the audience find it easier to read more books they like by just carrying a portable device to go everywhere. 

Features

• Firstly, E-reader is like the rest of the tablet allowing more multiple types of contents, with less banality.  
• Secondly, it can be used with internet, allowing Wi-Fi to get access to  book sellers so that readers can easily get to the books they want to read. On one hand, it has more resources for the readers to look for, on the other hand, it makes everything more convenient as it's freely to be downloaded from any places
• Thirdly, it has longer battery life, it can approximately last for 2 weeks
• Last but not least is E-reader is more readable, people still can read the text clearly even under the strong sunlight. 

Platforms

There is not much different to the physical books except for the way of how to present it and how this delivers to the public as a whole. That means, E-readers are as the enhanced version of the physical books. Also, the existence of  E-readers are associated to the general concept of publishing when it primarily represents the new platform, such as Amazon kindle and Kobo.

Amazon kindle

It's the production of Amazon.com. The name 'kindle' was derived from a metaphor meaning of the rising excitement from reading.

other image of amazon kindle from flickr.com

The kindle allows the user to download the contents through Wi-Fi or Amazon's 3G 'Whispernet' network regardless of the locations where users are in. The whispernet is also free of charge.

For further information, please visit https://kindle.amazon.com/

Kobo

The Kobo E-reader is produced by a Toronto-based company Kobo Inc.. It became like the rest of the e-book readers until the Japanese conglomerate Rakuten took over it in 2012. After this change, it started to develop its electronic ink screen.

The following video introduces the newest products of Kobo

For further information, please visit http://www.kobo.com/ereaders

Ereader facts

• 19% of UK consumers own an e-reader, also 19% of U.S adults own an e-reader
• average spending on digital reader newspaper subscriptions fell by $1 in 2012, while online newspaper subscriptions fell by $7
• Canadian e-reader owners use their devices for an average of 1.8 hours per day, down from 2.1 hours in 2011

more statistics are on http://www.factbrowser.com/tags/ereader/