We speak all the time about the future of the book, but this is not the real issue. The real issue is how we will read in the future, how computing and the digital (and new media in general) have changed our reading habits. The book is just one support among many others that we used for reading, and to have a full understanding of the process we should go beyond a specific support and start with more basic cognitive issues involved. This kind of research is particularly important in situation in which the cultural landscape and framework is being radically transformed, such as the present we are living in.
This is the object of this blog. The field in which this kind of inquiry is taking place is Digital Humanities, an interdisciplinary area of research that entered the academic battlefield quite recently, and it is still in search of a shared definition and position in universities all over the world. The novelty and openness of this field provides a possibility for interdisciplinary (and possibly experimental) work, involving different disciplines and different areas of expertise.