tired of the future?
Dan Visel at futureofthebook dot org mustered a year end posting. It was fairly un-perky. But times are very bright just now at dot com. FotB is now eleven years old, but just verging on a wave of enthusiasm. Three new seminars on the history of hand-held reading devices are already booked for 2010.
A few success ingredients here include immersion in legacy explanations of the fate of futurist projection. Most revolutionary projections have already occurred. Another continuing inspiration has been an inexplicable assurance of the continuing role of the print book in a context of its digital delivery. So, again, the paradox of transmission of conceptual work via physical objects is no better revealed, but further confirmed.
Perhaps another perky approach at dot com comes from adventure in post-digital emergence; steam punk, being analog, being there and being square. We have an enclave with futurist manifesto keyed on the model 5.
twas the nook before christmas
“We’re happy to report that all customers who pre-ordered nooks and were given a pre-holiday estimated shipping date will be sent their nooks in time to receive them by Christmas.”
I am looking outside for the package today. There is an anticipation of a new reading device in relation to problematic experience of the previous ones. This is similar to anticipation of a new book in a familiar genre. Indeed, the “content” of the device may elaborate in many directions like a song in a musical category or a title in literature genre. What does such a displacement indicate?
There is a frequent mention of hand-held reading devices as the book fulfillment of MP3 delivery format for music. But that MP3 distribution niche is already occupied by the print book; a single format that delivers all content. The hand-held reading devices proliferate and churn among applications, content encoding and navigation and display features attempting to achieve a sudden adoption that print books already provide.
So the anticipation of the new reading device is an allure of a delivery rapture that is deceptively projected by a few new features. (I just now heard a knock)…yes, it is the nook, 3:00 pm Central, Christmas eve!
parareading
The role of dedicated reading devices as delivery screens without other physical baggage may fit readerships that don’t need the individual books they read. This kind of avid reader is dedicated to an author, a genre and a reading experience rather than to a work with a given title. The economy of publishing for such fan readership will certainly prosper with screen delivery.
Such a book format shift from paper to screen is well established. Compiled airline schedules were once printed and even dictionaries and encyclopedia are now preferred in screen edition. Such displacement can be considered a delivery shift for a behavior of reading and such transformation may help to define e-books.
And any one redefinition assists redefinition elsewhere including the continuing role of print books in a context of their screen delivery. Perhaps print books are works read, comprehended and referrenced as a given title or bibliographic entity. That kind of parareading has its own avid fan base interested in cohesive works of scholarship or the tactile engagement in child’s book. Such affordances and even overlaps between print and screen book delivery could then build interdependence in wider terms of book readers.
year of the tablet
“No Outlet” is the current road sign for “Dead End”. It blends metaphor of electrical circuitry with roadway circuitry. This sign can apply to dedicated book reading devices in a context of tablet devices. The tablet devices have momentum of developers and news publishers without the dissipation of mimicry of books. Touch screen navigation, for example, is a component neurological and haptical of print book navigation, but it is a functionality shared with every physically prompted interaction including shopping for vegetables.
There is also cunning aprompt in the term tablet in contrast to book.