futureofthebook.com

click, buy, read

“Unlike WiFi, Kindle utilizes the same high-speed data network (EVDO) as advanced cell phonesóso you never have to locate a hotspot.
No monthly wireless bills, service plans, or commitmentsówe take care of the wireless delivery so you can simply click, buy, and read.”

The book reading function is a decoy to disguise a portable shopping device. The one click is a well known Amazon purchase feature. The connected Kindle device makes this relation portable and the format is just as accessible for a baby register or power tools as it is for books. Its also worth a mention that Kindle sells print books.

“Scott Devitt, an analyst at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., predicts that Amazon is on track to sell 500,000 to 750,000 more Kindles over the next four quarters (including this one). He estimates that Kindle owners will buy an additional $120 to $150 worth of books and other content for each device, bringing the total revenues over that time period to somewhere between $225 million and $355 million. Based on that, he values the Kindle as a $1 billion business for Amazon.”
(more)

digital surge to print

” The production of traditional books rose 1% in 2007, to 276,649 new titles and editions, but the output of on-demand, short run and unclassified titles soared from 21,936 in 2006 to 134,773 last year, according to preliminary figures released Wednesday by R.R. Bowker. The combination of the two categories results in a 39% increase in output to 411,422.”
Publishers Weekly

adventures in book conservation II

The PowerPoint
show from the latest project for preservation of historical libraries in Arequipa, has just now arrived. Also the project Wordpress
blog

ninety nine percent different

Its something of a mystery why print reading is constantly compared with the screen reading and why the destiny of the book is contested in that context. Such comparison discounts the predominating differences, their tangential futures, and the futilities and errors of their direct comparisons.

The anomaly of the ebook conveys difference rather than convergence. Note the maladroit dependence on plug-in media, pastiche of paperback covers and warnings from space at Moon Books. The ebook is a cult comic.

A more productive approach to the future of the book is study of the exclusive qualities and functions of each delivery mode via paper or screen, the potentials of their distinctive capacities to convey conceptual works and the good chance that they can be complementary devices.

hand-held fulfillment device

Comparison of Kindle and I-phone. The added note here is that book reading is a Kindle decoy to acclimate the habit of taking along an Amazon shopper.

edge

“What if the format of a book is specially matched to the way we think? I doubt it. It may be sometimes true that the length and pace of book is perfectly fit to certain arguments, but when that happens, it is a happy coincidence. There is nothing about the amount of content that fits into a hand-held paper presentation that has any special importance to the human mind. Nor is it easy to argue that printed squiggles have some privileged channel to thought. Reading is an unnatural act, a trick that we have learned to move ideas across space and time.”
Danny Hillis

“So the key, as I see it, is understanding the biases of the mediumóas McLuhan would advise. We might learn to see our movement from one dominant medium to another less as a net gain or loss, but rather as a shift of landscape that can be exploited quite positively if we take the time and energy to honestly survey the characteristics and opportunities of the new terrain.”
Douglas Rushkoff

All from a magnificent forum on
Edge Thanks to Nicholas Carr for inciting such an exchange!

The destiny of the book is to allocate context to screen reading. A shift of landscape in our patch of savanna.

momentum in Peru

Here is a
commentary on the last two weeks in Arequipa.

paper Wiki

You heard
it here first; print books counterpoint screen books perfectly. The distinctive attributes of the print Wiki are legibility or immediacy of meaning (no loading, network or screen drawing), haptic efficiencies of hands prompting the mind and persistence or default preservation. Screen books are self-indexing, but, surprise, print is self-authenticating; you see what you are missing. Just as with print book centuries old, new times and cultures will dependably read new meanings from an immutable reference.

shadow and echo

It is so much fun to suddenly notice shadows of a colonial past in the modern scene. A cell phone interface in indigenous language is not that different from the early dictionaries of the padres. And televised news is as an echo of the pregoneros who recited the news in the street. The sound of bells and noise of traffic also happened in the colonial city and the same books waited for their readers.

brave libraries project

Here is a
report from the brave libraries.

still life

Here is a group of forgotten books covered in vulcanic dust.

books of the brave

We made a visit to the seminary of San Geranimo where the direct decendents of the couragous friars of the colonial times are still at their studies. There is exemplification of the historical use of the libraries as well. The young students read their books in an intensive silence without a computer apparent.

high altitude

Indigenous panoply and craft assimilates imports of all kinds. From Christianity to cell phones to book conservation technique, the wily local talents will remake them all. In this interface there are many lessons for the teachers and those lessons convey discoveries. Soon everyone is surprised with a new culture.

It is a wonderful attribute of dislocation to highland Peru that practice of technique is exciting again. Take for example bookbinding. Bookbinding is a method for traveling conceptual works and making them portable. Bookbinding is a precept for dancing through earthquakes.

un sublime

Today (Wednesday) a Peruvian candybar, Sublime, was issued to the team of Anna, Chela, Joyce, Emily and Jessica following a very productive day with set-up and testing of our book and shelf cleaning and stabilizing operation. This method will be duplicated in much more challenging situations.

We have all been busy with start-up activities and short on time for posting but pictures and more will be forthcoming. We are amazed at the great variety and oddnesses of these old colonial collections. These are “books of the brave” to this day.

arequipa rocks

Our project team has arrived in Arequipa and was greeted by a magnitude 6 quake. It occured at 4 am so the experience was a transition from one dream state to another as the building swayed and everything vibrated loudly. The neighborhood dogs and chickens were very distrubed. The quake is a good omen for our project and we are already making progress to preserve historical libraries.

We have developed a useful method for cleaning books and are now at work preparing to move an endangered collection from a quake damaged building. Our workshop will soon study the colonial collections to determine characteristics of colonial binding.

server farm library and librarians

“You write a function to map the data: “Count every use of every word in Google Books.” That request is then split among all the computers in your army, and each agent is assigned a hunk of data to work with. Computer A gets War and Peace, for example. That machine knows what words that book contains, but not what’s inside Anna Karenina.”
Wired

“The Reduce computers correlate the lists of words. Now you know how many times a particular word is used, and in which books.”

comatose

The FotB.org
blog has gone comatose again. Ever since Dan left they appear unable to gather their banners and move on.

Teleread has a much livelier site with multiple daily postings and more opened forum. “1. Write for us or at least share news tips. You donít have to agree with usóweíre after a broad range of well-informed perspectives on topics ranging from the Amazon Kindle to copyright. Just be factual, interesting and clear. As for news tips, weíll credit you by name and, if you want, point to your site.” (from
six ways to help Teleread)

books of the brave

We are off on our mission to Arequipa, Peru. You can follow the project at our
wordpress site. For anyone more interested here is a short reading list:
Books of the Brave by Irving A. Leonard and
Empires of the Atlantic World by J.H. Elliott. Or Arequipa PowerPoint at this
site.

exactly

“I canít wait to see more phone/e-reader combos. While thereíll be demand for dedicated, Kindle-style devices, multi-use gizmos will be the real stars in the world of e-booksówhether phones hybrids or general purpose tablets and mini-notebooks.”
Teleread

Just so; the multiplicity of the functions of the hand-held interface will inevitably diminish its particular purpose for book reading. Here again there are attributes in both modes of paper and screen. Paper books are at an advantage exactly because they are exclusively dedicated to book transmission and sustained book comprehension. When is the last time that you called someone from a paper book?

center blog

The Kilgarlin center student
blog is revamped with WorldPress. Some pretty curious cloth bindings are shown in the header.

apples and oranges

The paper book is not inefficient when used with educational methods based on it. However, the paper book is a problematic resource when using educational methods of screen based learning and communication. The screen adapted methods do not induce linear reading or reading from start to finish.

The subsequent question is if the exercise of authorship to present a complex conceptual work in orderly array will remain in favor. And then there is a final question if the absence of formally presented conceptual works, in the format of paper books, will impair cultural elaboration and transmission.

Discussion and metrics are in the paper book,
Always On, Language in an Online and Mobile World, by Naoimi S. Baron. I did not read it through or from start to finish but the book does argue that social changes, not shifts in technologies of communication, are at work and that the two are not tightly interlocked.

print on reflection

Perhaps the contest between screen based books and paper based books can look at the transitions associated with digital photography. With digital photography there was little shift in the skills of picture making. But the underlying recording technology transitioned fully from analog to digital and as a result the delivery and presentation options were greatly increased.

All books are now digitally recorded. The increased delivery and presentation options include both paper and screen, just as with photography. Perhaps the unanswered question for the future of the book or photography is what will be the nature of the interaction of the extended delivery and presentation options? How will exclusive attributes or deficiencies of screen and paper define each other?