We’re taking ben’s leaving as an opportunity to think about the institute’s mission and the role of if:book within that context. and most importantly we’re trying to figure out the best way to involve the readers of if:book in this discussion. if you have any immediate suggestions or thoughts, please comment here or send me an email. we’ll try to kick off the discussion within a week.
if:book
A Project of the Institute for the Future of the Book
if:book does have many attributes but it rambles and never is attentive either to middle or long term discussion threads. There is something wrong with the forum format if it is going to contribute to the research institute agenda. The navigational and thesaurus features seem extraneous when they should be exemplifying screen reading efficiencies. Issues of reading efficiencies and effective reading technologies, reading instructional methods, and even eclipse of reading as communication need attentive tracking. if:book could be innovating a Sophie blog. Just processing the mission statement would be worth it.
thanks Gary. FYI . . . the mission statement is HERE
If:book does a good job with if, but not with book. It ends up that I watch if:book to read its omissions rather than its expositions even though I always hope that there will be discussions of the future of the book.
If:book crosses a particular landscape of screen reading, network communication and skilled expression. It appears driven but sometimes as a tourist with a camera. There is a hectic agenda without tangents or reverses or radiations. For example, digital technologies have prospered print as much as screen. So the established media can mimic and exploit the new media in a reverse of linear change. And the attributes of the new can be, in their absence and reverse, attributes of the established. The paper book is still trying to reveal an efficiency that was well understood in the medieval era, of conveying conceptual works in physical objects.
The expression; “The word became flesh and dwelt among us.” is from an era of books written on parchment. It is actually a patent of proprietary innovation both technical and conceptual that addresses both the “if” and the “book”. In comparison we are in a period of little increments of change during an integration of communications, education and discovery activities to a single screen presentation.