On the cave wall

摘要

Throughout the eras of tablet, scroll, manuscript, codex and printed book, the oral tale has lived on in the form of gossip, anecdotes, jokes, public oratory and barroom banter. There is no reason to suppose that the extended complex linear narratives of book technology, so treasured, will not also persist, whatever the delivery mechanism. But that mechanism is now primarily digital; printing presses, along with most physical apparatus of analogue human communication, are destined to become museum relics.