I found this Wired article on the future book while looking through my folder of articles I thought might be of interest. The article reviews the history of promises that books will change. For the more mature among you, the history included both recognition of Alan Kays “Dynabook” and some of the early innovations making use of Hypercard.
The author, Craig Mod, concludes that the promise we would experience a different kind of book has not materialized. Books have not become more complex and more interactive as promised. I might note that recently Pearson has again promised a new vision for a learning experience to replace textbooks that would move in the direction Mod promised.
Mod does propose that it has been the process of publication that has changed pointing to the greater variety of sources for books provided by Amazon. Having written a couple of these books myself, I would suggest that Kindle books although often sold in a digital format are probably more text based than the more complex multimedia and formatting used in most textbooks from publishing companies. The text heavy format is a function of the limited flexibility Amazon expects in offering the digital version of books for different devices of different sizes and I would suggest the demands on authors unable to tap into the capabilities of large publishing companies. No art department. No page designers adding boxes, side bars, embedded call outs. Amazon now offers a new authoring tool designed to allow authors to create more multimedia and Internet capable resources for the textbook market, but there is a downside to this fixed page approach for inexpensive reading devices. From experience, I have noted that the free flow text approach offered a way to adjust text size to device and reader preferences. Apple’s iBook author offers the potential for a different kind of book, but the limitation of products to Apple devices and Apple pretty much ignoring this product has stunted any increase in use of this tool.
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