What is writing?
A cognitive, intellectual, and physical activity that makes thinking visible as a message to others when it is transcribed in a shared code, on a material surface (of some permanence), with a marking tool, by hand or machine, for an intended purpose (to instruct, inform, amuse, etc.).

In our language, it imitates and records speech (imitates speech sounds) but often uses a more formal style.

A sign system for indirect intracultural and intercultural communication.

Writing is “a noun as well as a verb, an act and a product, a visual and verbal form, the composition of a text and trace of the hand […] letters, words, and pictorial elements all participate in producing a work with complex textual value. At its most fundamental writing is inscription, a physical act which is the foundation of literary and symbolic activity”
Drucker, Johanna (1998). Figuring the Word: Essays on Books, Writing, and Visual Poetics.

What is a text?
Thought unpacked and made visible
An intellectual composition
A piece of visual communication (could be read out loud or silently)
A written message embedded in material form

The body or whole of a piece of communication, or at least the main part of the body (as opposed to headings, footnotes, etc.)

The words (ensemble) of a piece of communication

A passage from the Bible or some other religious book (Google dictionary): to read a text from Psalms, for example

Textbook: book prepared for teaching; visually imagine what it looks like today (colour pictures, sections, sub-headings and headings) connotations of authority and truth.

Commonly To text: He texted me. Active act of communication, done on a telephone, and sent via telephone lines.

What is a book?
“Tree flakes encased in dead cow” Dean of Architecture at MIT (IBH 2)

A codex: sheets of white paper stitched together and filled with writing, protected by a cover.

A container that holds and allows us to share ideas, both a text and an object that holds that text.

A heavy and hard object, flammable, defenseless and passive, food for worms and a host for mildew and mold, in which we inscribe what we think we know.

A volume in which we read or write. …2. A particular part of a work. …3. The register in which a trader keeps account of his debts” (Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, 1755–6).

“A written (or printed) message of considerable length, intended to serve as an instrument of communication, using writing or some other system of visual symbols to convey meaning, meant for public circulation and recorded on materials that are light yet durable enough to afford comparatively easy portability. Its primary purpose is to announce, expound, preserve, and transmit knowledge and information between people, depending on the twin faculties of portability and permanence. Books have attended the preservation and dissemination of knowledge in every literate society.” Encyclopedia Britannica

Something we create, sell, and consume.

“The book viewed as an historic artifact is, if not the oldest, at least as old as any other human construction. It is also the commonest; there are more books surviving for every period of the world’s history than of all other objects put together. That is a large statement, which needs some justification. I have, perhaps, to stretch the meaning of the word book: by it I mean any vehicle conveying a message through the symbolic representation of language. […] [E]ven if we go back to the prehistoric, or rather pre-literate, world of scrapers, arrowheads and firestones, we must remember that Stonehenge and the strange linear sites in Chile may be astronomical documents that we cannot read.”
Nicolas Barker, “Libraries and the Mind of Man”. A Potencie of Life: Books in Society. The Clark Lectures 1986-1987. 1993. 179.

The book represents a change from an oral society (ear-focused) to a word-focused one (visual, abstract, symbolic, reconstructed by one’s intellect).

By determining the conditions of their manufacture, market (buyer and seller), their public and reception, we can determine the climate in which they existed.

A book is linear and segmented both in content and presentation (McLuhan).

The book itself is not merely an object; it is a message and, as such, is an agent (a force) for social change, as well as its witness. It has been central to shaping culture and society, and culture and society have shaped it.

The book allowed us to triumph over time and space, over a perpetual present, and record our history, ideas and civilization. It compensates for the limits of life and memory. Books are living tools, even if the author is dead. Yet, each one is the product of its own time and space, and its interpretation varies depending on the context.

It made science possible as we can record measurable data and compare it.

Writing allows us to store information outside of ourselves. As more and more people became literate, this brought about enormous changes in Europe.

“A man might move a crowd by a speech; the words, set in print, might move a nation” (Barker in Potencie, p. 1)

“[M]ore than a verbal structure, or a series of verbal structures; a book is a dialogue with the reader […]. That dialogue is infinite.” (Jorge Luis Borges, Other Inquisitions,1937–1952, 163–4).

Books are a symbol of power.

Books foster success.

Books forge national identities.

Books can be read aloud or silently, in groups or in solitude.

Books link our reality to our imagination.

The book is dead.

“I think it’s good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy.” (Frank Zappa, musician, 1940-1993)

What is print culture?
– a “noetic world,” consciousness (mental/intellectual space) constructed through print
– the industrial relationships of book production and distribution
– a body of practices arising from the social relationships of reading and information management
– a specialized field of study within the discipline of Communications
Harold Love “Early Print Culture” (Reader 74)

Something we create, sell, and consume.
A culture the printing press and subsequent technologies made possible.
A culture so overwhelmingly present in our daily lives that we are not  conscious of it.
The conduit for propaganda, advertising, and consumerism.
A culture moving from paper-bound to electronically-bound, more available, and yet restricted to those with electricity and computers.

Print culture is the conglomeration of effects on human society created by making printed forms of communication.

Print culture is the nexus of practices creating and sustaining the ideological, psychological, political, and economic power of the printed word for a given social group. (J. Rubin). [Ultimately, Rubin argues that print is not just a product of culture, it is also a mediator of culture. The passive/active dichotomy].