From the actual text:
[…] Now that the book is dead we can begin to divide up its remains. There is much work to be done. They used to say that the function of the book was to transmit information. Now they say that books are no longer the best way to do that, that computers and their strange, wireless spawn are the best way. They are right: a handheld device that can access any text from any place does a better job of delivering information. They are wrong: books and the writing-designing-printing-binding-distributing-reading of them have never been solely about delivering &or receiving information. They would also have you believe that you are, first and foremost, a consumer.
But the reader is both a consumer and a producer. The reader receives the text-book-art-object, and her reading takes it in, uses it up. At the same time she produces the text-book-art-object, putting its paths of meanings into play and driving them outward. The text-book-art-object is a unit of light, both particle & wave, energy transmitted, expended & still potential, waiting to be absorbed & re-produced in the reading. Energy creates energy. Production creates production. Production creates our shape in the world, is our shape-in-the-world in the movement-between of the world.
Our existence is a constant generating of text. We radiate text, reflect text, shed text like skin. We speak, we write. We send emails, text messages & memos. We fill in forms, we get a receipt with every purchase. Our world is bounded by, covered in, channeled through, text. The text-book-art-object is our sublime vision of the turbulent sea of language. It will be the death of us. It is our light-filled life.
We are only beginning to see. Let the book-in-the-world sit strangely in your consciousness, let it dissolve and disperse everything that they said you are. In this world you will be disciplined or you will be destroyed. But you have the choice: be disciplined by the tasks of what you produce, or by the tasks of the things that are being sold to you.
What has already begun is the New Manifesto of the NewLights Press. It is a collection of thoughts on and of the book, of what it can mean to make books, to produce the book, now. […]
The New Manifesto of the NewLights Press (second iteration)
20 pages, saddle-stapled
6.5” x 5.5” (closed)
Letterpress printed from photopolymer plates and collagraph
Unlimited, iterative edition
2013
$5 (plus shipping)
UPDATE ON 2/13/15: The second iteration of the New Manifesto is now OUT OF PRINT. The third iteration is forthcoming in 2015.
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