"I offered to get a Kindle for my daughter when I saw how filled her backpack was with heavy books -- her response was a flat 'no.'"
This story was relayed to us over dinner with the publisher of a major magazine grappling with the "you-mean-you-don't-have-an-iPad-App-yet-are-you-crazy?" fanaticism that has swept the publishing industry. He seemed a bit bewildered by his daughter's disinterest in lightening the load on her back with a more au courant ebook reader, despite of her iPod-toting and Facebook-friending credentials as a digital native.
Stories like this are all the more common as the rat-race of measuring megabytes, display size, and battery-life grows tiresome, and the world seeks to resettle into its own humanity. We can now effortlessly carry an entire museum collection of images, stay connected to hundreds of "friends" across time zones, and outsource much of our daily fact retrieval to the computers in our pockets. Yet in a world where technology affords limitless quantity of information and connection, the quality of these experiences is more important - and elusive - than ever. Even the younger generation can feel the emptiness of the click, when there is no feeling behind what they are clicking.
Amidst the ethos of I click, therefore I am, the rest of our bodies - and especially our hands - have taken a largely secondary role to our eyeballs and fingertips. When the two of us moved habitats from the capital of technological wizardry (MIT) to the capital of handmade integrity (RISD), it became clear how so much nuance, detail, and emotion has been lost in the "advancement" to the digital and the virtual. For example, we all stuff documents into perfect digital folders on our computer desktop that never appear to wear (to signify age), differ in size (to signify how much is in them), or even get "full" for that matter -- it's as if information is constantly on Prozac in the digital world. In other words, by removing the dirty, messy irregularity of our world so as to fit into mouse-able morsels of data, we lose the subtleties that empower our intuitions.
Now is the time to integrate what is great about the virtual world with all that works best in the real world. The first step is to realize that the future we are constructing has a few missing ingredients: grit, imperfection, nuance, and most importantly, feeling. We need to integrate the hand-based, kinetic, emotional approaches of art and design into the fabric of how we develop and use technology, in how we make sense of the present, how we invent the future, and in how we do business on- and offline.
Only then will "insanely great" experiences become the norm rather than just another long line wrapping around the block to pick up Steve Jobs' latest creation. Only then will products like the Kindle appeal to those like the publishing exec's daughter, who still prefer heavier, but more beautifully tactile, books. Lovingly handcrafted, the books still capture the feeling of the content, the literal weight of each of the words, and the emotional experience of reading, better than their digital counterparts. And until the digital can do the same, until make-you-cry art and makes-total-sense design are at the heart of all of these products, we will surely remain attached to the physical. Art and design sit at the heart of how we feel as humans - and in a so-called "experience-based economy" you can bet that how we feel matters more than anything else.
James McGrath Morris: Will eBooks Make Midlist Authors Extinct?
Rafi Mohammed, Ph.D.: Kindle, Nook Price Cuts: It's Official -- eBooks Are the Future of Publishing
Laura Moser: How iPads Can Make Your Kids Smarter
Mark Coker: Would You Read An eBook In Installments? The Founder Of Smashwords Wants To Know (POLL)
It takes time to unravel, reveal,consolidate options and then select the next steps to take. Of course I am reminded of Mr Maeda's amazing book "The Laws of Simplicity" when he writes so eloquently of 'simplicity and complexity'.. how they need each other. ...He shared an idea that the only way to find the balance was by defining a rhythm.
Coming from a backround in theater design as I do , the collaborative process
always demanded this rhythm of give and take. Time was the metaphor used to define the result.Perhaps we all need to give the process a moment to reveal itself.... There are many parts of this to comfort us--but the new roads are still being revealed----be patient..let go of the fear and judgements...time will tell us.
I've since come to realize that the "magic" of books has a lot more to do with scrolling mechanisms than anything else. What made ebooks difficult for me to read was the endless scrolling model where it's difficult to tell how far you've progressed through the book. The iPad's page-based scrolling interface solved that.
Now I prefer reading books on my iPad to reading them on paper.
Ehhh, really? Does form really matter so much? Books are lovely. Old ones have a great musty smell, yes. But iPads, kindles bring your entire library with you. And puts millions more books at your fingertips for the right price (and in the case of many public domain classics) free.
I love READING. Books are nice too but if eReaders respark an interest in the written word I couldn't care less if it was on a page or a screen.
And lastly "handcrafted books"? Really? How many of your friend's daughter's books are hand crafted?
And lastly lastly for real ... trees. They're nice to have. And we're cutting down less and less of them.