Could have been a great tablet.

Joshua Hood
2020visiononline.org

I know this post is old enough to be petrified, but it was interesting to me as I’m a bit of a bibliophile myself. It would seem obvious that an electronic market is going to open more and more in the future, but I’m wondering how far that reach will go. For example, who in Haiti is going to read off of (let alone own) a Tablet? Or in most parts of Africa? Or rural China? Most of the world’s population does not live at the level where they can afford and productively use many technologies we enjoy in the States. And yet, books can go that distance, and outlast any technology we’ve come up with in the last 200 years (just look at the Dead Sea Scrolls…not that just anyone is picking them up for a browse; but they endured time and change).

That said, Tom-Nel’s primary audience is not rural China or African villages, so in that sense I think your point is well taken. Considering TN’s target population it would seem a good idea to take the lead in investing and opening that market.

Thanks TN, for your work in producing good books!

I know this post is old enough to be petrified, but it was interesting to me as I’m a bit of a bibliophile myself. It would seem obvious that an electronic market is going to open more and more in the future, but I’m wondering how far that reach will go. For example, who in Haiti is going to read off of (let alone own) a Tablet? Or in most parts of Africa? Or rural China? Most of the world’s population does not live at the level where they can afford and productively use many technologies we enjoy in the States. And yet, books can go that distance, and outlast any technology we’ve come up with in the last 200 years (just look at the Dead Sea Scrolls…not that just anyone is picking them up for a browse; but they endured time and change).

That said, Tom-Nel’s primary audience is not rural China or African villages, so in that sense I think your point is well taken. Considering TN’s target population it would seem a good idea to take the lead in investing and opening that market.

Thanks TN, for your work in producing good books!

videos instead of pictures:
foot notes that are linked to other sources:
Audio that will invite people into the discussion:
QR codes that will invite people to download information to other devices:
The ability to comment in real time from the ipad and have it displayed on a site:
The ability to tweet a section of the book in real time;

There are more things I plan on adding – but that is a short list :)

What I have found is that most Publishers lack the ability to see past where they are now; they do not see the future, nor do they see the present. My hope, my prayer, is that they soon come to the realization that in a Conceptual Age creatives will change the way we do things. My worry, my fear, is that many will strive to hold to the Industrial Age and keep doing the same old, same old. But, as you said, if they do they will not survive the reality of a Conceptual Age.

Thank you so much for this information! This is thrilling to me as I am already combining videos and pictures with my pen. I did it a bit with my divorce memoir but am doing it daily with my blog now. I am currently searching in how to perfect my videos as all this high tech gadgetry is a bit foreign, to say the least.

But it is so much fun to do as I love to write and love to worship and the combining of the two on my pages is awesome! Bless you for posting this! It is an encouragement to me and I will look into it further!

Rebekah (pen name)

Ideas: business, whimsical, inspirational
My recent post PHP Fusion … a medical tempo that makes sense!

My recent post Blowing the Curve

People will still buy great books, probably mostly fiction. A great book is still comforting, still "feels" good to put on a home shelf, is still a good conversation piece, still a great gift, still completely portable, still unable to be replaced by flashy, new formats.

I don't like bookstores anymore because I get lost in all the hype. I'm ready for GREAT again. Let the hype be part of the new format. Give me fewer books and a publishing company with content integrity. For the love of books, I will buy what they are selling all day long!

For book readers, I don't see the interactive capability as all that exciting. When I read, I dont' want anything interrupting me. It's rare that I'll ever put a book down so I can go look up more "interactive" activities. Book reading is a solitary thing, and I can't see novel publishers hiring actors to act out the scenes, so I'm really not seeing much benefit there. Plus, the view screen is exceptionally bright – needed for magazines, perhaps, but a detriment to the power reader. It's why the e-ink is so popular on e-readers. I Got enough of a headache watching James Cameron's new movie. I don't want to get one when I read. Now if the new SI has the ability to turn on or off the E-ink, now THAT would make this exciting to the power reader. Turn it on for ebooks, turn it off for the magazines. But it would have to be a simple interface/touch to do that, otherwise, it won't work. Or, perhaps an auto sensor inside, if there's no interactive content, to switch to e-ink, and vice versa.

The ability to have interactive content for mags and newspapers is great. But… I'm not a mag/newspaper reader. Would I become one with this? Maybe. Just maybe. The look from the video is pretty awesome. The interface appears to be simple enough, though I wonder about smeared touch screens, etc. (can you tell I'm not a touch screen person?)

I'm curious as to the power requirements, and the cost. Both of those could make or break this for now. In the future perhaps,

I’ve always wondered about the movie industry and how they seem to consistently change the story line. Take Lord of the Rings. The trilogy is pretty much in sync with the books, but there is a depth that the movies omitted. Perhaps it’s the time and expense to create a movie that follows the book or that instead of three movies there would be twelve.

Here is the conflict in my thinking. When you read a book, albeit the old fashion way or a new reader device, you have the ability to visualize that story using your own creativity. You gain more than just reading the story, but can experience it. Seems to me that being guided so to speak by the visual, audio and animated story tellers we will lose a major reason why we read.

The new media presentation direction we are headed reminds me of when we were teaching the kids to read. We had all the pretty artist renderings of what their interpretation of the story was and the child’s imagination was left out. When we transitioned to books without pictures every child didn’t want to read those books because there were no pictures. I have written children’s stories for the children and grandchildren in my life. None of them have pictures, mainly because I cannot draw, but primarily because I want them to create in their mind what that story looks like.

I guess my question is, are now going to create the images of Huckleberry Finn and every other great book written or to be written and leave behind the imagination of our youth, just to accommodate new technology?