holding on to hand-held reading
Mobility is the distinctive allure of hand-held reading as the next surge, into portable TV, will demonstrate. When it comes to book reading you might imagine that the churn and competition is intent on eclipsing the core product. The iPad is now known as the e-book reader that can do every else and the dedicated, e-ink readers are supposedly doomed. But wait, when it comes to book reading constraints of delivery and display can toggle into attributes as the print book has long demonstrated. Maybe book readers just want to read books.
elderly bloggers
Nicholas Carr suggests that blogging is now old-fashioned. Eclipse is apparent in some of the futurist book blogs including the shutdown of Wikert’s Kindleville blog and the comatose dot org futureofthebook. Teleread, the geek journal of hand-held book reading, is going like gangbusters, but it is sold off in a blogger version of going public. Meanwhile the tipping point has tipped on e-book popularization. This small sector is now the only future for publishers; profitable print will just have to go away.
opt-out, opt-in
The Department of Justice has orphaned the orphaned works in the Google Settlement into either a fair use territory were rights holders can opt-in to screen simulation or into an orphanage where they are protected from adoption by a monopoly. Its a fork in the road for some 70% of the books to be Googlized.
Lurking here also is the first sale doctrine that has permitted unlimited circulation of a print copy. This privilege, however assured to print libraries, is assuredly not permitted to screen delivered libraries. And this fork in the road will ultimately return to the issues of equivalence of the print and screen book. The least agreeable library outcome would be restraint of both print and screen copy circulations.
the other
If you think about it the documentary world is another world; an underworld. It is a shamanistic realm, another version of reality. There is where society and its members go to ponder and ask questions large and small. When did the University of Iowa Highlanders become the Hawkeyes? In the fifties, of course. And what were the fifties?
The documentary world is where books are in an ecology of other recordings and artifacts. We are recognized there, we can go there, but it is a strange place. As a shamanistic realm it is an adventure to visit and there are risks and uncertainties. Theologies can turn on themselves, assumptions can be illusions and hallucinations of the mind can over power the tourist.