
Author Steven Johnson on what e-books are missing: "Skimming." - ssaraiya
http://blog.findings.com/post/17661615384/how-we-will-read-steven-johnson
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HSO
Skimming is the least of it. Current ebooks, in their linear form, are
essentially the equivalent of 19th century horse carriages with motors.
"Books" need to be reimagined. While reading is and will remain a
fundamentally linear activity, there is no reason why books need to be.

For example: Why is text presented flatly? Isn't that a direct consequence of
the limitation of physical paper? Where are the ebooks that allow you to
dynamically fold text according to hierarchical order? In a mathematical text,
say, sometimes I'd like to highlight the core results; other times, I want to
home in on a particular result and highlight the "path" (i.e. the "helper
thms" that are needed to establish the core result). Yet other times, I'd like
to see the connection between results across sections _on the page_, i.e.
without paging back and forth and holding everything in short-term memory.
Sometimes I want the author's comments and discussion and "connective tissue";
other times, I don't want to see anything but the structure.

Apple did a good thing, a first step with the option to generate flashcards
from your highlighting and notes. This is one extremely obvious thing that
ebooks were missing, although I think the implementation is not yet very good,
rather clumsy in fact. Sometimes I get frustrated that people keep making
ebooks as if they were still limit to the same physical constraints as paper
books. The whole form and structure and interaction could be made much more
malleable, such that the presentation of ideas "adapts" to your brain rather
than your brain adapting to a successive, linear, "rectangular", fixed
presentation and compensating for it. It's not like "ebooks" simply means
adding a bit of "multimedia" like it's the 90s...

~~~
hyperbovine
I read a lot of math too and the points you raise are good ones. I bought a
Kindle DX in hopes of jettisoning a large part of my hardcopy math library;
thanks to TeX, a huge swath of math literature is available by PDF (most of it
free, if you have university access). I guess I wasn't prepared for how
cumbersome it would be. Flipping back 10 pages to check a lemma takes, well,
10 seconds. It really detracts from the study experience.

That said, if I may play devil's advocate for a second, another way to look at
the linear structure imposed by print is as a useful constraint for conveying
thoughts in an effective manner. Every once in a while, I come across a
"classic", math or otherwise, where the author has put so much thought into
structuring her argument that I don't need to flip around. Invariably I absorb
more from these rare gems than I would from a sort of hypertext arrangement,
simply because somebody thought hard about the best way to learn the material.

It's funny you mention Apple because this strikes me as a very Apple thing to
do--impose something on its users which initially seems quite cumbersome (one-
button mouse, no floppy, one-button cell phone, no CD/DVD, hell the whole
HIG), but actually turns out to be a clever mechanism for enhancing usability.

~~~
sliverstorm
It occurs to me, you could submit a feature request to Amazon... "while
reading, type CTRL+5 to go forward 5 pages, ALT+5 to go back" or something
like that.

Of course this would be cumbersome on the keyboardless models, but they are
designed purely for novellas et al anyways.

~~~
shriphani
If they open up the API, someone can do something about it.

~~~
sliverstorm
The full sources for each Kindle are available. They just haven't gone to
lengths to make it easy to use.

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radicalbyte
I happily trade the ability to skim for the ability to search by keyword.

The bigger problem with eBooks is that there are a lot of lazy publishers who
don't bother proof-reading their ebooks, with the obvious impact on quality.

I've personally resorted to buying the physical book (the cost is the same)
and then acquiring high quality "fan made" versions for use on the PC/tablet.

~~~
lparry
iBooks has full text search, My kindle appears to as well although I think it
might work off a prebuilt index

Definitely agree about the poor quality publishers dump for sale

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jellicle
Current e-ink screens take more or less a full second to refresh, which makes
a mockery of skimming.

You can't skim through the entire contents of a website yet either - but you
should be able to! Hint, hint, startup people.

~~~
SatvikBeri
This is why I prefer reading on the iPad or a laptop as opposed to a Kindle.
While a Kindle is certainly easier on the eyes, being able to quickly flip
through pages and search through a book is just too great to give up.

~~~
levesque
Is it? I never found myself wanting for such an ability. For me, the e-ink
display is much more interesting than dynamic scrolling/skimming.

~~~
SatvikBeri
Some examples of how an iPad/PDF saves me time vs a Kindle:

-Let's say I'm looking up how control flow works in a programming language I have little experience with. I can skip to the index, find control flow, and click on that in a few seconds.

-The current chapter covers a new technique that I think could be applied to a previous example, and I want to check that example out. With the iPad/PDF I can easily move back and forth, with a Kindle I can't.

-The current page references a technique from a few pages ago where I don't remember the exact details. I can easily scroll back and forth with an iPad, not so much with a Kindle.

-I want to see if a book covers a relatively obscure topic. The iPad or my computer let me do a search through a PDF for keywords and preview each section containing the keyword, a Kindle doesn't.

~~~
nodata
I expect the OP was talking about reading fiction books. You don't skim
fiction.

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bo1024
I absolutely agree. This is especially noticeable with more technical
documents like research papers or textbooks. On the kindle, to flip to a
particular page, you have to go into the menu, pop up a symbols list, navigate
with arrows to each digit, then click go. And each of these keypresses takes a
long time -- probably half a second -- for the screen to refresh. Then, you
repeat log(n) times until you've found (via binary search) the section you
were looking for. Poorly thought out.

~~~
salvadors
You don't need to use the symbol list to type numbers — alt–Q will give you a
1, etc. That still doesn't make the process you describe _good_ , but if you
must do that, this should at least speed it up considerably.

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jrockway
The worst ebook feature is that the Kindle only stores max(last_read_page,
current_page). This means that if you follow a footnote to the end of the
book, your reading position is lost forever. This makes flipping through the
book a mentally-expensive proposition. (The screen refresh also makes this
impossible.)

I'm a big ebook fan, but only for novels or books that read like them. (Which
is 90% of the reading I do, so still a big win.)

~~~
sliverstorm
I could be wrong in this case, but I believe that is what the "Back" key is
for.

~~~
TeMPOraL
On my Kindle, the Back button works perfectly well in this case, returning you
from footnote to the point where you followed it in the main text.

~~~
jrockway
Try reading a multi-page footnote or manually exploring nearby footnotes.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Did that on pg's Hackers & Painters. Back key works just as expected for me.
It's like a stack - you can pop significant transitions from it, like
following a reference or leaving the book.

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mrspeaker
I was thinking it would be cool (well, it might only work for me...) to have a
"skim" mode on e-readers which let skip, say, 8 pages at a time - but the
screen would be horizontally split into 8 sections to show the text from each
of the 8 pages.

I only need to see a snippet of text to remind me "oh yeah, it was around here
somewhere..." I should whip up a proof-of-concept to test it, I guess.

~~~
rkudeshi
Do iOS apps have access to one's personal library in iBooks? (The same way
music apps like LyricWiki can access your music on an iPhone, I mean.)

If so, we could keep the canonical version of our ebook libraries in iBooks
and have additional apps that can access the content in myriad and interesting
ways. It would allow the main iBooks app to remain simple and focused, while
allowing useful innovations to sprout up around it.

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malandrew
What books need is more aggressive editing. Skimming wouldn't be necessary if
the goal were maximizing signal versus noise. I'd pay a premium for the same
book more aggressively edited. There's a cost associated with the benefit of
reading. Time is now at a premium and part of the cost of a book along with
the monetary cost.

Most books are around 250 pages, but I find that most of those 250 page books
really only have about 120 pages worth of content.

A while back I asked about it on Quora and discovered that most book
publishers aim for 50,000+ words. With the World reaching peak attention,
especially for those that read a lot, it's ridiculous to keep insisting on
books at 250 pages, especially in the case of technical books and non-fiction

[http://www.quora.com/Do-book-publishers-push-for-books-to-
be...](http://www.quora.com/Do-book-publishers-push-for-books-to-be-
around-250-pages-plus-or-minus-50-pages)

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yock
For me, this problem is manifested in referencing bible verses. I love my
Kindle, but use it once and you quickly learn that it wasn't designed for
random access.

~~~
darasen
This. Try opening right to Mathew on an e-reader. Then try to realize you need
to take a look at another scripture so you keep your finger between the pages
you are on flip back a bit read what you need then then easily return to where
you were. This holds true in programming books as well.

As pointed out note tasking is less natural in digital format.

In many books, such as DnD books, I know I can find certain rules (or other
needed information,) by about where they are in the book.

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pooriaazimi
Take a look at this short video: [http://www.macrumors.com/2012/01/23/multi-
touch-page-flippin...](http://www.macrumors.com/2012/01/23/multi-touch-page-
flipping-ebook-concept-shown-on-an-ipad/)

It shows how skimming could actually work on an iPad, and it's fantastic.

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richardw
Closely related to skimming - can't do an equivalent of a binary search on it,
if you have to jump back 100 pages to look at something you saw. I have a
recipe book with 1000 recipes on the Kindle and it's a total nightmare to use.
A paper copy is so much more usable.

This doesn't seem un-fixable, though. Something like dragging the page
indicator backwards/forwards would help, or mirroring the iPod's wheel gesture
to move back-forth more quickly. Spin two fingers for chapters, or something.

~~~
tikhonj
The issue is not the interface, it's the speed--an e-ink display is naturally
slower right now. It is a real problem but one due to technology rather than
UI.

Coincidentally, on my 3rd-generation Kindle (the one with the keyboard), you
can jump by chapters using the left and right arrow keys. This ameliorates
going back in most books.

Also, Kindles have a nice text search which I've found useful on several
occasions. This has also helped somewhat, although it's still lacking overall.

Ultimately, I would not want any non-linear books on my Kindle either--I'll
stick to pdfs and actual textbooks for now.

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functionform
I wish the popular e readers had apis for working with book content - skimming
could be only one of the awesome enchancements the tech community could make.
Among others would be tying words to wikipedia lookups or research citations
to the actual content, aggregating all graphs in some sort of navigable 3d
interface, page in page reading, the list could literally go on forever.

on the negative side, we'd probably have to sift through tons of crappy word
cloud for your book apps.

~~~
DanBC
I'm reading lots of Scandinavian crime fiction (in translation to English) at
the moment.

I have no idea how to pronounce any of the names, so some kind of link from
the written name to an audio clip would be useful.

Also, it'd be nice to have some "translator's notes". Perhaps there's some
nice phrases in the original that just don't translate well; or some idiom
that doesn't have an exact English version.

Sure I can just use a computer and browser and a search engine, but it'd be
nicer if it was built in.

~~~
darasen
That would be helpful for many Sci-Fi and Fantasy novels as well. Especially
the ones where people get bent out of shape if pronounce something wrong.

Full disclosure: I read Tolkien for years before I discovered that elvish
names with C such as Celeborn or pronounced with a K sound.

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ThomPete
If the CPU usage isn't a problem then that seems pretty easily solvable. I can
certainly see how it could work.

But I take it's the processing part that's the problem?

~~~
farnsworth
I think it's more just the screen update speed. You can flip pages about as
quickly as the screen will update, which is fairly slow. Also, the visible
page area is much smaller than a normal book, especially a textbook or a
journal, and you can only see one page at a time. It makes for slow skimming
and sort of tunnel vision that causes a loss of the visual structure.

~~~
sek
Sounds like a task for the GPU.

~~~
dangrossman
A faster GPU won't make the e-ink microcapsules rearrange more quickly.

~~~
sek
I heard from the kindle gen 4 announcement that the processor rate has
influence on the refreshing speed.

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tessellated
Forget skimming! In ebooks I can search for words and phrases, that feature
alone weights up any inconvenience.

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alok-g
Corel PDF Fusion [1] implements "flick" view for skimming. Implementation
however is nowhere close to right (too slow, mouse gestures mishandled, etc.)

[1] <http://www.corel.com/corel/product/index.jsp?pid=prod4100140>

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wazoox
The updated nook color has a new "skimming" bar. It allows to go from the
beginning to the end of the book in a swipe, displaying chapter titles and
sample phrases. It's really usable, but of course it couldn't work on an eInk
device.

Unfortunately it only works on epub, not PDFs alas.

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pnathan
Meh, what really is frustrating is the inability to sell used ebooks.

