I have stumbled upon two new developments that tackle the future of books and of course the two have the web at the center of the experience.
The first is Amazon’s Kindle, the wireless reading device is more like the iPod for books, where you can buy a book at a cheaper price and get it delivered wirelessly to the device it self so you can read it. You can also read magazines and newspapers.
The second is the Unbook experiment by Jay Cross and Dave Gray (who I know of), the concept lies in trying to make books into living objects and not timestamped into versions that become obsolete when the next one comes along. Books that evolve.
The concept is explained better in this slide show:
[slideshare id=569866&doc=theunbook0012003-1219747524880688-9&w=425]
(Jay’s book is called “Learnscape Architecture“)
The Kindle enables me to take as many books as I want anywhere without worrying about weight I have to carry. mmmmm but i love the feel of real books, turning the pages…
While the Unbook enables me -the reader- who’s interested in the subject help bring the next version through discussion over blogs and still be able to read the paperback version!
Anyway, being the web 2.0 geek I am, I had to Google “Books 2.0”, and found a blog -shockingly- called The book is dead with a post about Books 2.0! Turned out to be the online blog associated with a book called “The book is dead” by Sherman Young. The post is about an article on BusinessWeek called Book Publishers: Learn From Digg, Yelp—Even Gawker where the author talks about how publishers need to embrace Web 2.0 concepts.
Guess I am going to buy Jay’s and Sherman’s books before I go and say anything more on this subject!
