Edition

If an edition is available to subscribe to digitally, and no one subscribes to it, does that edition exist?

​

I would argue it doesn't. But perhaps a traditional physical edition doesn’t either. In the digital world, the Master will be stored in a physical form in data centres or ‘the cloud’. Once that subscription/edition has been accessed and that information is then relayed to the screen of the person accessing it, that is when an edition is created. This edition exists as whatever platform that subscriber is viewing it from. It could be a phone screen, a laptop screen, it could be emitted out of a projector in light particles. The data exists in that viewer’s portal and that is the digital edition.  You could argue that when the page closes the edition ceases to be and therefore isn't. The edition is in the data.

​

 Let’s say you're making a series of ink drawings. Applying the ink is applying the data to the page. In the case of a digital edition, you are applying data with electricity to the screen to make that edition. Applying the ink to the page is what makes the edition as does the electricity to the screen.

​

But who's to say that edition doesn't exist when it's not being viewed? Looking into quantum theory it has been confirmed that systems and atoms react differently while being observed as opposed to not being observed. A great deal of philosophical theory has sprung up around this idea. There are a lot of interpretations and nobody knows what the right one is. But one of the more logical arguments states that by observing something, you're interacting with it, and it's this interaction that causes the final state. So you could argue that a physical edition disappears whilst not being observed just as a digital edition does and it's that interaction which makes it exist.

​

If you noticed on the home screen there is a counter. For each page hit an additional edition has been accessed.