One of the stand out points I was left wondering about after today’s symposium was the distinction between content and form. Also, how much understanding we have about the difference between them. It linked up closely with our discussion on if we are network literate just because we know how to write content on the internet. Does knowing how to work a website make you network literate or do you need to know how to actually make the website (coding etc.). If we relate it print literacy if we know how to get a book made does that count. We seem to pass things over to a 3rd party to do the really technical parts. Are we losing knowledge but not knowing it, should it be an essential skill? Adrian agreed that I was disempowering us in a sense but giving over the control.

Another take away point is this statement that Adrian said “You are not an author until the book creates you”, basically you are not an author till you publish the book. You are not an author if you just write books. Another profound line was that “The object constitutes the person”. These lines definitely left me thinking after the talk.

Just on a side note Betty recommended reading this book called “Divine Art, Infernal Machine” by Elizabeth L. Eisenstein which I think would be interesting to check out.