Countless public meetings of governments all over the world, community groups, and basically anyone that has ties to something relating to economics, information and the humanities has been discussing the integration of AI into the world. Immediately all I think of is NFTs and crypto and in a way I can see how this is a distraction from our personal relationship with books.
Visual artists I have known that have had a fair amount of success selling their work tried to say that NFTs were the way of the future and when they tried to convince me, their was an air of anxiety in their explanation. Not one of them could fully explain what the purpose of an NFT was or why it was more important than owning an original painting.
The same problem exists whenever someone tries to explain crypto to me and why it is more important than buying gold. Gold is a real thing and is highly useful and conductive. This is why it has retained value for so long. Crypto is nothing and doesn’t exist. It is a fantasy.
To a similar extent, the argument that ebooks are the future and that print books are dead also doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe if I only read bestsellers where there is no regard for print quality. But most people don’t see the world of handmade books anymore. Maybe this is why ebooks are so popular. But that lack of a tactile relationship with a thing that we are imbuing our feelings into is maybe why the market for physical books is waning in North America. Publishers are trying to figure out ways to retain their audiences and sadly, some are completely changing over to the digital format.
Well NFTs died in 2022.
Crypto still has not taken off and every week there is a new international scandal over it.
When it comes to printed books, there is nothing that replaces the feel of a handmade book.
The first release of Lost Telegram Press has a special hardcover version that will be the standard for future releases. It will be hand bound of course but it also has other inserts and hand selected items that fit with the layout of the work, as well as its content.
