How Books Will Become Machines / quote 15 of 21
Nature of the book
One of the most obvious differences between books and maps is that books are representations of an higher dimension. A book is a container, a volume of dimension 3, capable of hosting one-dimensional text and bi-dimensional maps, tables, diagrams and trees. As a volume, a book offers essentially a solution to organize a discourse in space. It has an architectural function. [...] The architectural function of books has made possible architec- tural discourses like long demonstrations and rich narratives. The effect of books on our culture is not limited to the discourses them- selves. It is a consequence more generally of the unique capacity of the template to efficiently convey such structured ideas.