e-Life with e-Artifacts

July 29, 2011 | Comments Off

Even if it wasn’t inevitable, which it is, we are doing it: We are building a Digital Future. School libraries have been bulldozed to make way for computer labs. Is this good? Is this bad? Is this progress?

Come to think ofÂ it, “digital” is an understatement. The new “books” are connected in every which way besides being directly shunted into our brain stems. Looming on our horizon is an era when folks will wonder if it’s even worth reading a “book” that doesn’t have a solar recharge panel, color touch screen, internet connectivity with email, or without the ability to contribute our own content (interactive footnotes, or message boards and polls related to possible plot alteration and additional characters?) Or maybe we will become so over stimulated that we will turn Luddite and shun this digital book thing and get back to paper? It’s no doubt that paper books will hang on, but they may be more like expensive novelties than content delivery systems. Likewise, digital reading forms will have the option to read offline – it may be too distracting to read and do 18 other things at the same time – and some of us are just not good at taking in information while multitasking. Reading can be such a delightful and rare moment of leisure, a getaway from the day’s business and all that exhausting living we do.

Imagine this…

You’re in cafe, sipping your decaffeinated ersatz espresso, puffing on your incredibly realistic and nicotine packed e-cig, and perusing shelves “stacked” with holograms of book spines, each “volume” tantalizing you with a shiny cord capped with a sterilized plug for brain insertion. You don’t have your brain shunt installed yet – it’s mostly the kids who’ve rushed to have this done – but you see the skull piercing shop across the street and think, hey, why not, you haven’t read anything really good lately – all the old classics and new bestsellers are only available now via instant brain-load.

…Back to reality: Now that we’ve added digital books with multiple functions to our every day repertoire, how do we get to the business of getting more people into reading? Check out this article from Huff Post: Time to Sell Reading: What the “Good” Publishing Industry Needs to Learn from the Big “Bad” Drug Industry

P.S. The creators of e-Readers are going to try their best to create objects that look and feel exactly like real books – but this does not solve the problem of the nasty headache I get when I try to read a novel and check my email at the same time.

Comments

Comments are closed.

Share |

Search

Archives
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
LiveLinks
- 22books (sharing of book lists)
- A Cup of Tea and A Wheat Penny
- ABAA – Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America
- An author blogs about Colombia
- Author’s Den
- Bait n' Beer - A blog about books, publishing and their intersection with technology.
- Beatrice
- BiblioCrunch - An excellent e-book publishing platform.
- Bibliopolis
- Big Bad Book Blog
- blippr (think twitter for books)
- Book Club Girl
- Book Patrol
- Book Slut
- Book Square
- Book-Blog
- Bookburger
- Bookdwarf
- BookGlutton
- Booklorn
- Bookninja
- Books & Bars
- Books on the Brain
- Books On The Nighstand
- Bookslut
- Booktrix - Every trick in the book…
- Buzz, Balls & Hype
- Chptr1.com - The easy way to sample new books.
- Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind
- Emdashes
- Future Perfect Publishing
- GalleyCat
- Grammar Party!
- Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog
- Lazy Library
- Lit Mob
- Litpark
- Maud Newton
- Paper Cuts
- Pop-Up Magazine - A magazine: Live On Stage!
- Publishing Insider
- Publishing Perspectives
- Publishing Trends
- Readiac - Only the books you MUST read.
- Reorbit: Social Media Theater - Real-time serial programming for the written word
- Scribd.com
- Six-Word Memoirs
- Talking About Colombia - An author blogs about Colombia & human rights
- The Book Bloggers
- The Book Trib
- The Happy Booker
- The Millions
- The Mumpsimus
- The Relaxed Writer
- The Shatzkin Files
- The Written Nerd
- Twitterlit
- vol1brooklyn.com - Culture blog for literary types.
- Word Count: Freelancing in the digital age.
- WritersCast - The voice of writing.

Feeds

Recently Written

Categories

Admin

Jul

29

e-Life with e-Artifacts

Comments

Search

Archives

Feeds

Recently Written

Categories

Admin

Jul

29

e-Life with e-Artifacts

Comments

Search

Archives

LiveLinks