The future of the book?

The Casual Optimist showcases IDEO's three new eReader-type creations that combine social media with the reading experience. In the comments, Jacob Covey expresses much of my opinion

I don’t want to join more fleeting conversations, I don’t want to spend any more time on monitors than I already have to, I don’t want clever excuses for making my life more complicated, no matter how jaunty and persuasive the accompanying soundtrack is. I just want to read a fucking printed book because reading a fucking printed book is one of the most comforting, meaningful things in all this sprawling life.

As to whether these are actually the future of the book, the first two are more the future of book review websites, bookgroups, etc. The "Alice" creation, in which performing various activities unlocks other information such as extra chapters or text messages from characters, is more the future of activity books for adults--similar to current activity books for children (such as Art Fraud Detective). Activity books for children are designed to be fun and to teach reading comprehension and other skills. Books using the "Alice" template can be much the same for adults--fun and teaching ways all that annoying exciting technology can be used. I see it taking the place of more game-type activities, for example, Sudoku, rather than reading.

in which connections are made—GML to SGML to HTML

In the mid-1980s, I spent 18 months as an editorial assistant at IBM. My job was to code data for technical manuals and users guides using IBM GML. I long since dropped it off my resumé because, (1) when I included it, no one seemed to know what it was and (2) coding was never a part of my subsequent job responsibilities.

In the mid-1990s, I created a web page like everyone else. I used a WYSIWYG editor (my more techie friends rolled their eyes and admonished me, "it creates sloppy code!") with occasional forays—with the assistance of a Dummies book (Web Pages for Dummies? HTML for Dummies?)—into the source code, which I found incredibly easy to understand. I don't recall if I found the ease with which I grasped HTML to be surprising or par for the course.

Around 2002, I started a blog and picked up more HTML tags. Again I found them easy, but this time I connected them to the GML I'd used back at IBM. Well, I thought, ML stands for markup language, so I guess all markup languages have the same base codes. Little did I suspect how right I was.

Today, I read the HTML entry in wikipedia. I learned that HTML was based in SGML. Huh, that sounds familiar, I thought. So I did a little research and yes, SGML was based on IBM GML. Ha, I've been preparing for the web revolution since the '80s!

The amazingly invisible Borders eReaders

Dear Borders,

If you are truly serious about selling eReaders in your store, I suggest you put functional examples on display so the prospective customer can feel it and see how it works. I have never found a functioning Sony eReader in any of your stores over the—what—2 or 3 years in which you've been selling them. When I have seen a Sony eReader, it has not worked. That does not give me confidence that it would work (for long) once I got it home.

Just last week I was in one of your stores and went to the new eReader Center hoping to give the Kobo a test run. While there were many Kobo boxes on display, none of them seemed to contain a Kobo—not even the box labeled "Display Sample".

Dudes, Kindles—you know, the eReaders that used to be available only online—can now be picked up and handled in Target. While it is probably a good business idea for you to carry more than one type of eReader, a better one would be to have them available for comparison.

No love,
Natalie