a fairly smart wishlist for iPad’s iBooks — including two features that are directly related to social-reading.
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A Project of the Institute for the Future of the Book
a fairly smart wishlist for iPad’s iBooks — including two features that are directly related to social-reading.
Agree with the half of your suggestions – agree 100% that there should be an easy way to «dive in to» background information, while reading a book, starting via one word. Have start with these 2007 belong an old web page concept (http://oyen.de). Called «post-its or notes». It is based on jQuery and HighSlide… To be honest the actual version is not iPad ready – either work properly on an mobile device like iPhone… keep me uptaded. thx
love the character idea. Oh how that would help in reading the russians
Am astonsihed. These seems like ideas to SEPARATE people.
1. character “stats”
this sounds like an excuse for lazy reading which, to me, removes much of the value of immersion into a book AND negates the individual author’s style
2. friend annotation
why not actually TALK to people rather than rely on audio or video clips and, again, this is cluttering the reading experience with disruptive interruptions
3. checking on friends
WHY would you want to spy on friends?
4. book stats
totally removes the mystery and passion of reading – creates a technology barrier between you and the characters AND between you and the author
5. Wikipedia access
this already exists alongside reading but putting it “inside” reading again adds a technology barrier
6.checking on the reading progress of ALL friends is another astonishing extension of spying and invasion of privacy
Overall these ideas worry me because they are so similar to the dictatorship that is being rolled out by Facebook whereby personal information is no longer private. It has become “owned” by Facebook, to use and abuse however it likes.
Fascinating that no comments with alternate views are allowed. Why?
While I love my books and am very interested in the future of books in a paperless UI, I cringed at almost every idea in this video, tending to agree with the list posted above by Brian. Few of the ideas proposed in the video seem to leverage ebooks in helping readers make their way through the book and possibly in the world or, where they do, they seem restrictive, trivial, or intrusive.
Most of the suggestions I see involve “get on the bandwagon” social networking applications (which tend to sequester people in very controlled and nonsubversive experiences–the opposite of the reading experience). Most people read as a solitary activity, for pleasure, enlightenment, or requirement. They don’t belong to book groups (and even book group members don’t want to be supervised). People who lend books or share reading experiences do ask others where they are–not typically out of a need to micromanage but because they really want to talk about the book. You don’t need a big brother interface for that. And, if you lend an “ebook” why do you need it back? My god, what a DRM nightmare!
Instead, link books to a range of outside information sources (giving me defaults and the ability to add or change sources). Instead of the giant tosspot social networking environs we have today, help me find where people have expanded on the book’s ideas or setting and published that work–whether it’s textual, visual, or oral. If the book includes geography, show me sources on those parts of the world today and, if applicable, in the story’s historical setting. Don’t place those links in situ, necessarily (or give the reader the option)–not everyone wants or benefits from the distraction.
Provide a friendly query interface to customize the book–if it’s a reference on health, show me the parts related to a condition, limited to N degrees of separation.
Bundle with human voices reading aloud and the ability to add my own. Accept voice commands–“read that again”–“go back to”–“help me find”–“learn more about”…
If illustrations are present, add optional unique and subtle ways of highlighting interesting complexity, relationships, or details.
Something else: writers who provide rich experiences have minds like magpies. It’ll take some thoughtful filtering to link to key outside resources rather than known resources about everything experienced or behind ideas in the book. Possibly a combination of the reader selecting and the book suggesting (helping with discovery). Otherwise, you’ll quickly and literally be lost in a good plot.
I like the character idea – but think that’s ultimately the responsibility of the ebook author and EPUB creation software (not the reader) to implement that type of cross-referencing. Since I play the role of the “software provider”, I’ll definitely add that cross-referencing to our EPUB export TODO list.
Interesting ideas, Bob. Thanks for taking the time to share them. I can see how some of concerns Kurt raises make sense too. As I writer and editor, I’m trying to imagine 2 things. What kind of audio and visual content I’ll use along with the text to truly deepen the reader / viewer’s experience of the work I’m developing. And also whether or how there may be a role of editors in mediating the experience of readers of these enhanced books. In the past, editors played that kind of role–and today when I’m editing I’m trying to help writers convey what they want to convey and connect with readers. If we’re all going to having a more social experience as we are reading, are there some ways editors can make this a more interesting or engaging or useful experience for the reader?
The social elements suggested here, including the book club, are already available in commercially available e-book apps on the iPhone and iPad. Unfortunately — or, depending on your view, fortunately — the e-book apps they’re available on have one thing in common. They’re e-Bibles. (I’m an atheist, so not here to sell you a religion.) Why Bibles? 1) Open source. 2) No copyright. 3) Two millenia of annotation and metadata available to map various chapters/characters/themes to each other. 4) Lots and lots of real-world communities reading the book simultaneously, always, even when Oprah isn’t talking about it. [In at least one e-Bible, it will find related discussions NEAR YOU based on passage you’re reading] 5) Lots to talk about. Point being: better e-books and social e-books isn’t a tech problem or imagination problem — it’s a red-tape problem.
Interesting Vid. Agree that the power of the net-connected e-reader has a lot of potential. A lot of that potential, or at least interestingness, has to do with anonymized data (or not, depending on user prefs.) whereby we can get information about a book in ways that were never before possible. If curious, I talk a little about this at: http://www.ed4wb.org/?p=345
cheers.