How the Page Matters

Book excerpt: From handwritten texts to online books, the page has been a standard interface for transmitting knowledge for over two millennia. It is also a dynamic device, readily transformed to suit the needs of contemporary readers. In How the Page Matters, Bonnie Mak explores how changing technology has affected the reception of visual and written information. Mak examines the fifteenth-century Latin text Controversia de nobilitate in three forms: as a manuscript, a printed work, and a digital edition. Transcending boundaries of time and language, How the Page Matters connects technology with tradition using innovative new media theories. While historicizing contemporary digital culture and asking how on-screen combinations of image and text affect the way conveyed information is understood, Mak's elegant analysis proves both the timeliness of studying interface design and the persistence of the page as a communication mechanism.