“I, Reader” is a great essay about reading, books, and digital devices. One of my favorite bits:
If you were to ask me what I thought I was doing in checking news sites on the internet as many as eight to 10 times per day, starting with the election in 2004, I would tell you I thought I was keeping myself safe. Especially late at night, I felt like I was on night watch for the forces that would eventually put George Bush back in power one more time. It felt like a vigil.
A short video produced by IDEO on the future of the book. The first prototype is the most interesting to me.
Boone Gorges just released Anthologize, a very interesting WordPress plugin for collecting content and publishing in a variety of e-book formats. Looks like a great idea.
A few weeks ago Religion Dispatches published an article about medieval manuscripts and multitasking. The point is that for centuries our minds have referenced texts on multiple levels; the internet did not inherently create this distraction. There is also this gem from a David Brooks column:
The Internet-versus-books debate is conducted on the supposition that the medium is the message. But sometimes the medium is just the medium. What matters is the way people think about themselves while engaged in the two activities.
The Guardian published an article a few days ago discussing the concerns of some academics over modern reading habits. It centers around the idea that, for some, reading online is an inherently shallower process that leaves a person less educated than reading traditional print texts.
This misplaced concern does not account for the animated ads, commercial content, and constantly growing hodgepodge of buttons surrounding standard content online. Put this same interface garbage on a printed page and I would not be able to focus on a text either.
For a traditional media outlet to decry the perils of reading online it ought to at least place blame in the right space. The Guardian, and other media outlets, that plaster ads and irrelevant content around their articles are not innocent bystanders to this loss of attention span.
An interesting project is underway that seeks to create a model for book publishing that can thrive on the web and across devices. More intriguing, though, is that the founders are taking WordPress as their starting point and developing the software through plugins. There’s even been a prototype book release.
In an effort to start tracking some of the ideas I have while reading I want to start making note of ideas and questions that come up here. This is the first of such posts and we’ll see what form they take in the future.
Interesting article that examines some of the frustrations with current systems for tracking reading habits. Since I just finished writing an article for The Whitman Pioneer about open knowledge systems this got me thinking:
Long feature piece from The New York Times about the various ways people are tracking data about their everyday lives. It turns out that seemingly mundane things can offer remarkable insight into how our minds and bodies work. Couple points about this:
Published in the New York Times yesterday:
In the rapidly evolving college textbook market, one of the nation’s largest textbook publishers, Cengage Learning, announced Thursday that it would start renting books to students this year, at 40 percent to 70 percent of the sale price.
Then, if you read a little further down the article you come across this:
Besides giving students a new option, rentals give both publishers and textbook authors a way to continue earning money from their books after the first sale, something they do not get from the sale of used textbooks.
Bingo, there’s the rationale behind why these book publishers are doing this: they’re hoping for a renewable revenue stream.
No, it doesn’t seem as though the publishers have suddenly found a soul and decided to stop gouging students on books, it’s just that they’re going to gouge them in a slightly different way and under the guise of providing a more economical option to the student.
News about e-books just keeps coming. This from a New York Times article today about mobile versions of Google Book Search and Amazon Kindle books:
In a move that could bolster the growing popularity of e-books, Google said Thursday that the 1.5 million public domain books it had scanned and made available free on PCs were now accessible on mobile devices like the iPhone and the T-Mobile G1.
Also Thursday, Amazon said that it was working on making the titles for its popular e-book reader, the Kindle, available on a variety of mobile phones. The company, which is expected to unveil a new version of the Kindle next week, did not say when Kindle titles would be available on mobile phones.
Interesting to see if this catches on or not. The next few years could be quite interesting in terms of the digital consumption of books (although I cannot envision putting paperbacks down).
Link via Google and Amazon to Put More Books on Cellphones – NYTimes.com.
There’s a great piece on e-books on Ars Technica that is written by John Siracusa. The article is quite long (weighs in at 7 pages) but is also quite good. IN it John writes that:
And so, a sad end for the eReader that I knew (née Palm Digital Media, née Peanut Press). But this story is not just about them, or me. Notice that I used the present tense earlier: “people don’t get e-books.” This is as true today as it was ten years ago. Venture capitalists didn’t get it then, nor did the series of owners that killed Peanut Press, nor do many of the players in the e-book market today. And then there are the consumers, their own notions about e-books left to solidify in the absence of any clear vision from the industry.
I particularly agree with the last sentence here. I think that the lack of consumer information and knowledge is really holding ebooks back. The other factor I think is just a simple lack of experience on the part of the consumer with ebooks. People already read news and such on digital displays, but I think many people (myself included) would balk at the thought of reading an entire novel on a digital device. There’s just some connection that I think most people have to physical books and I think a large portion of consumers will not be convinced until they use ebooks. For that to happen companies need to publicize them and present a clear and consistent message.
Link via The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age – Ars Technica.