Over at Teleread, David Rothman has a pair of posts about Google’s new desktop RSS reader and a couple of new technologies for creating “offline web applications” (Google Gears and Adobe Apollo), tying them all together into an interesting speculation about the possibility of offline networked books. This would mean media-rich, hypertextual books that could cache some or all of their remote elements and be experienced whole (or close to whole) without a network connection, leveraging the local power of the desktop. Sophie already does this to a limited degree, caching remote movies for a brief period after unplugging.
Electronic reading is usually prey to a million distractions and digressions, but David’s idea suggests an interesting alternative: you take a chunk of the network offline with you for a more sustained, “bounded” engagement. We already do this with desktop email clients and RSS readers, which allow us to browse networked content offline. This could be expanded into a whole new way of reading (and writing) networked books. Having your own copy of a networked document. Seems this should be a basic requirement for any dedicated e-reader worth its salt, to be able to run rich web applications with an “offline” option.
if:book
A Project of the Institute for the Future of the Book
Amen, Ben. I’ve done a follow-up to your follow-up” Hardcore techies may take the technology for granted and say “Duh”—but we civilians need to explore the implications in depth. If we’re not careful, the usual suspects could hijack the networking concept via proprietary technologies. – David
I love this idea, and I’ve thought along these same lines before.
I love cognitive stimulation overdrive (surfing the web for hours, ending up with 40+ Firefox tabs open) but how can I reign this in? Surely sitting down with one single book for hours offers something which web surfing does not. Right?
But the plugged in Internet is so damn engaging! (addictive?)
So, thanks for the great blog. The Future of the Book blog is my favorite right now. Imagine my surprise when, after watching Lewis Lapham on Book Notes on CSPANN, I find his new quarterly partnered with if:book to create the annotated The Iraq Study Group Report.
Keep up the fascinating, edge work! = )
“david’s idea”?
like this “idea” is something _new_ at all,
let alone something that _rothman_ cooked up?
oh please.
i’ve been making apps like this for _years_ now.
i expect a _lot_ better thinking when i come to
the home site of sophie and bob stein. but lately,
i haven’t been finding it. and now you say _this_?
or was this just mutual back-scratching in the form
of cross-links to juice pagerank for both the sites?
-bowerbird