Books in the Age of the iPad
craigmod.com
craigmod.com
Actually, the iPad, or tablet computers in that matter, could open completely new ways of "reading entertainment", since the book could contain not only text and static images, but also other pieces of multimedia or even pieces of software! I am now making up a quick list of what could be possible:
1. iPad books can have video illustrations or sounds embedded.
2. Books can have some taxonomy data. For example, I could see a list of main characters which were presented in the book until the page I have read. I can see their short description, their relationship, or even where are they currently.
3. The text can be "location aware" - for example I am reading some scene, and there can exist an interactive map for that scene, so I will look around myself how it looks like there.
4. There can be some elements of gaming incorporated, like some puzzle or whatever, etc. etc. etc.
The possibilities are really endless here and I am excited to see what the content providers will be able to come up with.
You don't even need the book to do this explicitly. Having the app reference Wikipedia based on content read would probably serve as a good 90% implementation.
> Yes, iPad will allow to display the formless content into different layouts, but that's hardly impressive...any e-book reader should be able to do that soon.
Sure, however the important point is that this is the first device to do this and be of a form factor we will want to spend intimate reading time with. None of the individual technologies in the iPad are unique, but the combination in this form factor, wrapped in Apple's well-considered OS/interface is. This is most definitely not trivial. I'm sure (and very much hope) that Amazon, et al follow up with similarly great devices. The more competition the better our experience (one hopes) as readers.
Pagination is useful to our mental models of progress through a document. I'd go so far as to say it's one of the reasons scrolls died out while we're still using the bound book format many centuries after it was invented. A hundred pages is a lot easier to parse than an infinite number of positions on a scroll, while recall and addressing is vastly easier citing a page number than counting out a distance to scroll.
In other words you don't see pagination going away because it's part of our mental model of what a document should be like. I think the article is saying that mental model itself is becoming obsolete and we won't have documents as much as we'll have formless information. That's not going to happen overnight (and the article points out there will probably be a hybrid period where print exists beside electronic). But eventually I think it's probably inevitable.
Oh, I see. You want to introduce “actual” line breaks! Oh, just imagine the joys of explaining that concept to those new to it. They will certainly get it right away ;)
(Lines might be a useful navigational tool for code but there is a reason why that number is used nowhere else.)
Ironic that his post harps on the increased importance of editors in the new age of rich digital textual content.
But this illustrates, of course, one of the greatest (and most dangerous?) qualities of digital -- trivial updates / iterations.
(Note to all fuming LP fans: I know fully well that you can still buy LPs. You will still be able to buy printed books in one hundred years. That’s not the point.)
LPs are for collectors and very special music, you don't buy crappy pop on an LP, you buy a classic, something where the LP means something in and of itself.
Books will be the same, special, something beyond the ordinary, where as your pop books become something digital, because the book isn't part of the experience.