The Future: What Books Will Become

kk.org:

A book is a self-contained story, argument, or body of knowledge that takes more than an hour to read. A book is complete in the sense that it contains its own beginning, middle, and end.
In the past a book was defined as anything printed between two covers. A list of telephone numbers was called a book, even though it had no logical beginning, middle, or end. A pile of blank pages bound with a spine was called a sketchbook. It was unabashedly empty, but it did have two covers, and was thus called a book.

Read the whole story: kk.org

Comments

[iwritereadrate]

07:34 AM on 04/26/2011

Hi there. Really interesting article. I think if we look closer than the next 10-20 years we are going to see perhaps the most significant change in how we experience and read literature. It's an exciting time to be either (or both!) a writer or a reader. The digitization of books really marks the biggest change (and potential opportunity) for publishing since the invention of the printing press!

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

09:09 PM on 04/15/2011

I love it when he iterates through a multitude of different future for text, especially the dense, highly-linked meta-text books will soon become. Reading information-rich historical novels, like the Aubrey-Maturin series, it was especially fun and helpful to have both the Wikipedia article, and the "Gun Room"'s (http://www.hmssurprise.org/) pages available on demand. How much more excellent/convenient/brilliant will it be to have access to information like that right in the text.