How the Page Matters: A subvention for 'How the Page Matters'

Bonnie Mak's book, "How the Page Matters," historicizes recent debates about eBooks and similar technologies by casting the page as an interface that has been under development since the scrolls of Antiquity. "How the Page Matters" tracks the page through the manuscripts of the Middle Ages, the printed books of the early modern period, and onto digital displays. By locating the page in a broader tradition of writing technologies, the book re-examines the print and digital 'revolutions' and shows that the questions raised by digital theorists about the visualization of information are not new, but are instead the persistent issues in a long history of graphic reproduction. "How the Page Matters" contends that the material of the page is constitutive of knowledge; the quality of the paper, the shape of letter-forms, and the layout of text and image are all part of the conversation between designer and reader. This award provided a subvention to help defray the cost of publishing the book.