
The 'Future Book' Is Here, but It's Not What We Expected (2018) - cmod
https://www.wired.com/story/future-book-is-here-but-not-what-we-expected/
======
mark_l_watson
That was a good read.

I wrote 10 books for conventional publishers (Springer-Verlag, McGraw Hill,
Morgan Kaufman, J Riley) but burned out on writing. What made writing new and
fresh for me was a few years later starting to self publish. I sell far fewer
books but I find it much more satisfying writing exactly what I want, not what
publishers’ market research dictates.

I stopped publishing physical books, via the excellent Lulu service, because a
physical book freezes what I can do with the content. I use leanpub now to
publish eBooks and I can effortlessly fix small errors, add examples, and
sometimes declare a new edition by adding material and removing out of date
material. The platform lets readers get the updates for free. I also started
releasing my eBooks with a Creative Commons share with no modifications or
commercial reuse license - I encourage readers to share my books with their
friends.

The author of this article makes a good case for using an email newsletter. I
generally only spend about two hours a day writing and I am not sure if I want
to spend some of that time on a newsletter.

~~~
mettamage
Ha! Your story fits neatly within the self-determination theory of motivation
[1]. You clearly tweaked your autonomy to be higher.

I'm a big fan of the theory, but I almost never see clear cut examples like
this in the wild.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
determination_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory)

~~~
Bartweiss
Huh, nice observation! I usually shrug at that sort of theory because the
terms are too fuzzy to put to a test, but this is a very nice example of the
idea.

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coldtea
Yeah, we have those "future books". They're called webpages.

As for actual books (ebooks or physical), they have their own unique
advantages and use cases compared to something with animations, superfluous
effects, link jumping, and so on which sounds like a children's pop-up book
and less something for focused study.

~~~
olah_1
Reminds me of Matthew Butterick's article on why he didn't make an ebook
version of Practical Typography. [https://practicaltypography.com/why-theres-
no-e-book-or-pdf....](https://practicaltypography.com/why-theres-no-e-book-or-
pdf.html)

~~~
chubot
I appreciate someone taking a principled stand with regard to closed
ecosystems / file formats. It's weird that the future turned out this way...

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glangdale
I find myself frustrated by a different way in which the "Future Book" is slow
to arrive - specifically, the glacial pace that e-Ink displays are improving.
I bought each generation and found them better and better, and yet... every
generation seems further apart and slower and slower to finally close in on
the ideal: black ink on a white, non-glowing background.

The. Background. Is. Still. Gray. Dammit!

So frustrating - I'm an enthusiast for these (for travel). I love owning
physical books, but would happily cull all but my top books (you know, 60-80
linear meters of shelf space) and keep a lot of things on e-books. But only if
e-Ink displays can finally get to a white background!

~~~
spookybones
I'm still waiting for decent note-taking. I like marginalia in physical books.
I own the latest paperwhite, which is supposed to have the best note-taking
capabilities, and typing is excruciatingly slow.

~~~
glangdale
There were a couple things on the market that were claiming this (the
ReMarkable and one other new one) as a feature. To me the note-taking would be
pretty good also, but the fact that it's black-on-gray is the full-on deal-
breaker (or at least, I already have a latest-gen display in the current shade
of gray and until it improves, I'm not getting another one, even if it's
bigger or good for note taking).

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dredmorbius
I'm reaching the conclusion that thinking the future of the book would be a
different _product_ is hugely flawed. Books, or reasonably static electronic
equivalents -- PDFs and ePubs -- suit the process of immersive long-form
content assimilation. Spastic UI/UX does not.

But as with quipu, cuneiform, papyrus, the codex, moveable type, and its
manifold enhancements over the past two centuries (the preceding 350 years saw
virtually none to the press itself, though book-form itself advanced
markedly), the biggest differences have come in the process of creating,
publishing, duplicating, archiving, and propagating texts. Not, for the most
part, accessing them.

Starting about 1880, a number of changes to text development and distribution
began, with typewritten "manuscripts", loose-leaf bindings (enabling updating
of already-published texts), databases, digital text storage, digital
typesetting (roff and kin, early 1970s), version control systems, online and
hypertext systems, wikis, and distributed version control.

(We might push that back slightly further as well to Carl Linnaeus and index
cards.)

The ability of many people to collaborate, _or compete_ , in developing a
collective narrative, with instantaneous typeset updates is truly novel. It's
also to a large degree independent of and agnostic to end-point consumption --
desktop, laptop, mobile, TTS, and hardcopy are all reasonably equivalent from
the perspective of the txt.

(Text discovery, recommendation, and popularity are another matter, McLuhan's
observations re: medium are relevant.)

We should pay far more attention to _process_ rather than _product_.

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52-6F-62
I really like the article, but I have a different point of view when it comes
to the ideal "future book".

They seem to carry on the assumption that a book didn't already exist in an
ideal format. I'd posit that what we've learned is too many features is
actually a bug.

Reading can be a silent, remote activity that coerces you into reflection
without the distraction of immediately commenting and joining a community to
battle out barely-set thoughts.

A younger me might have said "well a future book according to this person is a
web page—capable of almost anything". Now, however, I think a plain
transmission in static form (whether read or dictated) is an ideal form unto
itself.

Such a static transmission must be worked on, edited, scrutinized. If it
isn't, it won't be well-regarded and it can't just go away.

I really like having my collection of paper books. I also really like my
Kindle (and I'm so glad there's no community or comment option).

Just to stamp some book-nerd credentials on the end of this—I'm currently
working on software in publishing, took a "Book History" course at U of T
(Why?), and I'm rarely gifted things, but my sister bought me a first edition
of 1984 for a birthday and for some reason my girlfriend decided to buy me an
old box set of Azimov's Foundation series (well, the first three) just last
week. So there!

~~~
inflatableDodo
>They seem to carry on the assumption that a book didn't already exist in an
ideal format.

I think you are in very good company with that opinion.

>"Books are sharks... because sharks have been around for a very long time.
There were sharks before there were dinosaurs, and the reason sharks are still
in the ocean is that nothing is better at being a shark than a shark."

\- Douglas Adams.

~~~
52-6F-62
Brilliant! Thank you. I knew I loved Douglas Adams.

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pier25
A book is (generally) an idea expressed in long written form. It doesn't
matter if it's goat skin or e-ink. The medium is pretty much irrelevant. This
is why the form hasn't changed in thousands of years and why we don't need
interactive features in books.

There are exceptions to this such as recipes books, but these are collections
of somewhat unrelated smaller pieces of content which actually work better in
other forms such a blog, wiki, etc.

~~~
falcor84
One way in which the medium matters is the duration of an average reading
session. After installing kindle on my phone, I found myself enjoying reading
in very short sessions, e.g. while queueing for coffee. This different
interaction with a book makes me choose books with shorter sections on my
phone, than I would on the Kindle device I use before bed. In particular, I
found some textbooks with short sections to be excellent for this kind of
short reading.

~~~
pier25
Not sure if it's really the medium instead of the situation. You could also
use your kindle, tablet, or paper book while queueing for coffee.

------
Dowwie
As Summer is arriving, if you haven't chosen a fun science fiction book yet
and are interested in the subject of this article, you may enjoy Neal
Stephenson's book, "The Diamond Age". A tablet-like "book" plays a central
role in the story.

~~~
bradleyhb
Not to mention printing on paper is a terrible idea in 2019.

~~~
bernardlunn
Why? trees are renewable and our eyes need a break from screens

~~~
marvindanig
Trees may be renewable but the arable land belongs to the forest.

~~~
RandomBacon
In the US, there are more trees now than 100 years ago. I believe the law is
for companies that cut trees for products, to plant two for every one they cut
down.

Now there are problems in the rest of the world with deforestation, and
hopefully we can fix that.

~~~
marvindanig
The negative impact of pulping isn't limited to just deforestation and loss of
uncommercialized land. I think wikipedia does a fine job to explain the
impact:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_paper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_paper)

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pcmaffey
That was refreshingly good.

I’m in the testing phase of an interactive kids’ “future book” series. If
you’re into this kind of thing / have kids, would love to hear thoughts.

Pilot episode is live at
[https://www.featherbubble.com](https://www.featherbubble.com).

~~~
undershirt
That’s really cool. Nicely done. I couldn’t find anything in the bear’s fur
though.

~~~
pcmaffey
Thanks... what device? (the thing should be in the upper right quadrant of
screen...)

~~~
undershirt
On a macbook. Ah, I found it

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miki123211
IMO we will see the biggest change in how books are written after copyright
abolition. We sort of kind of do already, with the big titles like Harry
Potter, Star Wars (I know, it started out as a movie) etc. We have the
canonical, original books, but we also have a lot of fan-made titles. Some of
them create a specific narrative based on the original work, i.e. Harry Potter
and the Medhods of Rationality[1], and then people create other fanfiction
based on that. 99% of it is fourteen-year-old girls with no writing skills,
but there are nuggets that could make great money if not for copyright. I
think living, breathing universes made by fans, possibly coupled with chapters
released as they're being written, fan voting etc. is the future. Even post
copyright, it could make authors money, think crowdfunding or "Character x
will either murder y or have sex with y, depending on what option gets more
money".

[1] hpmor.com [2] se [1] or [https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12461030/1/The-
Tinkerer](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12461030/1/The-Tinkerer)

------
bubblewrap
"email has yet to be usurped by algorithms"

Unfortunately, that isn't true. Many people use apps like GMail for Email,
which does filter with algorithms. And many people complain about their emails
not getting through.

I find that worrying especially with sight on the social media bans of
unwanted people. You'd think they could at least resort to email newsletters,
but email is controlled by the same corporations that just banned them.

------
netman21
Everything this article pines for is in modern video games. Story,
interaction, jumps out at you (just add VR).

~~~
bernardlunn
For Fiction I totally agree. Although I am a bit Luddite about paper, I like
the break from screen time

~~~
aidenn0
I'm sure there are some non-fiction mods for various games out there...

Though interactivity is more straight forward in fiction because if you can
freely modify the virtual world around you it rapidly becomes fiction.

