Post-Digital Print: The Mutation of Publishing Since 1894

An expert analysis and history of the past, present and future of analog and digital publishing

The mutation of music and film into bits and bytes, downloads and streams is now taken for granted. For the world of book and magazine publishing, however, this transformation has only just begun. For more than a century, avant-garde artists, activists and technologists have been anticipating the development of networked and electronic publishing. Though in hindsight the reports of the death of paper were greatly exaggerated, electronic publishing has now certainly become a reality. How will the analog and the digital coexist in the post-digital age of publishing? How will they transition, mix and cross over? In Post-Digital Print, Alessandro Ludovico rereads the history of media technology, cultural activism and the avant-garde arts as a precursor of the so-called dichotomy between paper and electronics.
Alessandro Ludovico (born 1969) is the editor and publisher of Neural, a magazine for critical digital culture and media arts. For more than 20 years, he has been working at the cutting edge (and the outer fringes) of both print publishing and politically engaged digital art.