When we were reading The Familiar, I was struck by how different it was to any other book I had ever read. Carrying the heavy thing to class for several weeks, I wondered what it would be like as an ebook. The more I thought about it, the more, to my dismay, I realized that The Familiar would not work as an ebook.  For my final project, I  want to look at how texts change over mediums. My analog artifact will be The Familiar. My online artifact will be the Tara McPherson article “Digital.”

I have one of my sources lined up at this point. Besides the obvious, The Familiar and “Digital,” which I know don’t actually count toward my sources, I also plan to use Hayles’ “Intermediation: Pursuit of a Vision.”  It talks about the relationship of different mediums to each other and I thought it would be helpful. I will obviously be doing more research in the week and a half I have left, especially during the workshop time that has been set aside.

My argument is that there is something fundamentally different about these two mediums, and not just that one of them is analog and one is digital. I will use a rather silly but affective example to illustrate my point. I was reading a book from one of my favorite book series on the way to and from my brother’s soccer game a few years. I came across a scene that, to put it lightly, I did not much care for. I would have thrown the thing across the car, but I was on an e-reader at the time. I did not want to break the thing, so I stewed until I got home and then watched Captain America to calm myself down. There is an affective difference between print and digital literature. There are even books, like _The Familiar _that the transition would, at best, be difficult if not entirely impossible.

This project will be primarily words and pictures. I haven’t fully fleshed out form yet or the argument for that matter but I will. Here’s to works in progress!