I remember the Wimbledon men’s singles final of 1967. John Newcombe won. It was one of the most comprehensive thrashings of all time. But it was not the beating of Wilhelm Bungert that made the match so memorable. It was the very first time I watched television in colour.
Now I see that 2010 is to be the year of colour. There is a not-so-quiet revolution going on in the world of digital publishing, and it’s all centred upon the eReader. Just in case you’ve been in a subterranean cavern for the last couple of years, I’ll just explain that an eReader is a piece of hardware that lets you read books that have been digitised so you can view them through a screen.
Screen technology has evolved. The web-pages are all aquiver with the excitement and new words such as electrowetting, transmissive, reflective and transflective abound. Cutting through the technobabble I came at last to realise that these new screens can display video, text and photographs, in full colour, in less than favourable light conditions, and they can do it much better than they could in the past.
Of course colour TV in the UK was brought to us by the only 600 lb gorilla in the jungle at that time – The BBC. Now that most fearsome protagonist Apple is stirring up the overcrowded eReader market, and book publishers are expressing concern.
Will the new iSlate device, or the high end readers developed by Mirasol, Liquavista and Pixel Qi enjoy greater commercial success than Amazon’s Kindle? Will Apple transform and dominate the market for electronic print in the same way as it did with electronic music?
Much depends upon how relaxed and inclusive they will be about the management of digital rights. We’ll have to wait and see, but maybe for not too long.
I think the new devices will redefine the length of content that we read, and consequently subsequent formats. I think the challenge will be discovering works that we’d like to read, at least initially.
I’m less interested in eReaders just for reading on than for having a slim, A4 sized, pen-annotatable reader/tablet I can bring documents to meetings on, scribble on throughout, and squirt to other attendees with similar tools at the end. I think the Plastic Logic ‘Que’ might be the closest to this thus far.
The day this happens is the day I (we all?) stop printing so much, and move towards the fabled ‘paperless office.’ Wouldn’t that be great!
I once attended a lecture called “beyond the last visible sauce bottle”. The theme was that reading is A GOOD HABIT, no matter what the content. I agree. Look at the impact Harry Potter had on the attitude of kids (and some adults) towards reading books. If the new devices stimulate interest in reading then that’s all to the good. If we kept reading for meaning and yet lost reading for pleasure, the human race would be deeply impoverished, don’t you think?
Er, I don’t know Cynan. I still gain some pleasure from handling a book, I might even sniff it, and I have been known to curl up with a book and absently caress it if it is nicely bound and has brought me particular enjoyment. I see a book as more than a carrier of black dots on a white background, it is a deeply embedded part of our culture. I find it very hard indeed to give up ownership of a book, and I prefer to buy them secondhand. By contrast I find it very easy to shred electronic text once I’ve finished with it.
Although in a different format from electronic print, I find audio books on my Iphone to be exceptionally useful. It is great to have access to fictional books from my favourite authors on a light, portable device that is constantly with me and ’stories’ can be downloaded almost instantly. Great for filling in a boring 15 minute wait for a train, when I wouldn’t want to be carrying a bulky book around. Also, as someone who learns through listening rather than through reading, I realise that technology is meeting my preferences. Many of these advantages apply whether you are talking about an audio or electronic print book.
Interestingly, as an adult, I have only ever listened to audio books since getting an IPhone, so it is 100% the case that Apple that have opened up the avenue to me. Previously audio books were available on CD or tape, but it is the Apple device that has made it work for me, for the reasons I mentioned in my first paragraph. I think that Apple have an amazing ability to think, “What do our users want?” and if there are genuinely people out there who want to read digital print books, Apple have a very good chance of cracking this market.
As someone who embraces technology, I am slowly coming to realise the enormous power of Apple as something that I rely on heavily to integrate different aspects of my life:
- the built-in webcam in my MacBookPro so I can Skype my friends and family,
- a shared electronic calendar with my husband accessible from both our laptops and IPhones,
- the ITunes library which is downloaded to the Iphone.
- I even heard it is possible to programme your Sky Plus box remotely from your Iphone!
Apple is beginning to integrate different aspects of my life in a very convenient fashion. As the popularity of Apple grows, it may be casting a shadow over more than publishing.
Fair comment Alison. I was thinking only yesterday that I never leave the house now without all of the following (neatly contained within my iphone):
Live broadcast television (via Catchup TV and Sky News and Sports)
Recorded TV (via BBC iplayer)
Video on demand (You Tube, iTunes, BBC iplayer)
A vast music collection and player
DAB Digital Radio with hundreds of channels from all around the World
An atlas and gazetteer
Dynamic ordnance survey maps, street maps and guides
National Rail Enquiries and booking system
A hotel booking service
A contact bridge tutor and a partner with whom to play a hand or two
A chess partner
The WWW
A diary, calendar, phone book and contacts management system
A library (eBooks and Audio Books)
A personal information manager
My top 6 favourite board games
A shopping trolley
My bank accounts
An abundance of photograph albums
This and all of my blogs and social network portals (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn)
Instant Messenging (AOL and Windows Live)
Live football, cricket and tennis commentary and scoreboards
WebEx
Alarm clocks and reminders
A link to The Atomic Clock
Various calculators and data convertors
Email
My lottery numbers
A shared drive (Dropbox and Google Docs)
My favourite Jewish Cookbook
A paint box
Post-it notes
A car parking reminder and assistant
Various timers
A remote control device to control my laptop
A notebook
An voice memo recorder
Skype
OCR software so I can scan business cards etc.
Transport for London information on tap
Traffic webcams for certain cities
The Manchester Evening News, Independent, Guardian, FT, Time, Daily Telegraph
The Radio Times
Office Suite of Programs (Documents 2 and Google Apps)
Wifi hotspot detector
- and that’s just for starters.