Book consistency
tags:: #books #culture #dataIntegrity projects::@bookLab
How do we know that a book's contents have stayed the same over time? A written book can be changed, by replacing pages, erasing and rewriting parts of the book, or replacing the book all together. A digitally written book can be changed even easier. Take Google docs for example, where 5 people can edits 1 document at the same time. Sometimes, it is hard to tell if anything has been changed at all since the last time you have written in it.
If books are the stories within them, then how do we ensure the consistency of the book when the story is shared? If someone were to tell a story verbally, and that story were to be repeated by the listeners over and over again, it is incredibly likely that the original story is very different from what is currently being said.
With these points in mind, how do we know that two people's understanding of the same book is actually the same? What if they believe they have read the same book, but one person had read the written copy, while the other had heard it spoken to them after it has gone through 10's of 100's of people? Surely, they do not have the same understanding.
So, does a "book" being defined as a "book" entail the consistency of the contents?
Maybe, this malleability is part of the definition of a book.