No Imagination

For a couple months I’ve been pretty focused on a book project that actually started probably close to two years ago but that stalled out as I tried to figure out what it wanted to actually be (or be about). It was only recently when a particular phrase got jammed into my head that something clicked and a picture of what it might be started to take shape, leading to what now I’ve called Context Window.

It’s a mosaic-style, McLuhan-esque book about technology, people, values, and priorities. It’s a million little wires threaded together. It’s very much plugged into my current thinking and feelings about technology, but I’ve tried to leave it open-ended for the reader to ultimately come to their own conclusions.

It’s not quite a real book yet but we’re getting there. My original plan was to produce this myself, but over time it became apparent that it felt worthy a different approach and so I’ve been working with my friends at Hemlock Printers in Burnaby to try to bring it to life. A small Riso/screenprinted edition isn’t out of the question but isn’t the main focus at the moment.

The real tricky bit is turning out to be funding production as my initial treatment turned out to be waaaaaaaaay outside my budget range (paper pricing has gotten out of hand) and put the per piece cost of the book in an unreasonable range. Full disclosure: I’m aiming for a price of somewhere between $30–40, knowing that I intend to keep the price as low as is reasonably possible while maintaining very high production quality.

We’ll see where we end up this week as we continue to try different ways to rein in those costs, but maybe I need to actually look at some kind of pre-order…