http://www.xplanazine.com/2003/05/publishers-and-etextbooks-the-potential-of-commercial-digital-libraries Thu, 04 Dec 2008 06:04:11 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.1 http://www.xplanazine.com/2003/05/publishers-and-etextbooks-the-potential-of-commercial-digital-libraries#comment-411 Rob Reynolds Fri, 30 May 2003 17:20:00 +0000 http://www.xplanazine.com/2003/05/publishers-and-etextbooks-the-potential-of-commercial-digital-libraries#comment-411 Rob, this comparison to the way Apple is doing music is EXCELLENT. admittedly, songs come in discrete units that make it easier to do that... although the idea that songs come in discrete units IS a cultural construct - and I think our cultural construction of the "book" and what it is will now being to change rapidly in this new technological environment. you will get texts based on your needs: the content, formatting, and features will be selected by the user, and authors are going to find new ways of writing in order to accommodate those needs... and to express their ideas in quite new ways than anything we have done before. it's very exciting - and I wonder whether it will be a gradual evolution as you say here or whether it will suddenly SPRING on us, like music videos did. we now take music videos for granted, but I remember watching the first music video that I ever saw, in the basement of a rooming house at Cornell University, Peter Gabriel, it must have been 1981. a generation ago: but it's now a cultural form that is essential to the way many people think about popular music today. Rob, this comparison to the way Apple is doing music is EXCELLENT. admittedly, songs come in discrete units that make it easier to do that… although the idea that songs come in discrete units IS a cultural construct - and I think our cultural construction of the “book” and what it is will now being to change rapidly in this new technological environment. you will get texts based on your needs: the content, formatting, and features will be selected by the user, and authors are going to find new ways of writing in order to accommodate those needs… and to express their ideas in quite new ways than anything we have done before. it’s very exciting - and I wonder whether it will be a gradual evolution as you say here or whether it will suddenly SPRING on us, like music videos did. we now take music videos for granted, but I remember watching the first music video that I ever saw, in the basement of a rooming house at Cornell University, Peter Gabriel, it must have been 1981. a generation ago: but it’s now a cultural form that is essential to the way many people think about popular music today.

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