Future of the book?
Plenty to get your teeth into here:
if:book - The Future of the Book - the evolution of intellectual discourse as it shifts from printed pages to networked screens - see http://www.futureofthebook.org.uk
Read:Write - a downloadable report commissioned by Arts Council England to look at the changes facing publishing and writing in the internet age.
"Where possible, ACE should raise awareness of the importance of avoiding
technological lock-in, for example by encouraging uptake of open-source technologies
with a strong and active developer base."
Sophie is open sourcei software for writing and reading rich mediai documents in a networked environment.
Sophie’s goal is to open up the world of multimedia authoring to a wide range of people and institutions and in so doing to redefine the notion of a book or “academic paper” to include both rich media and mechanisms for reader feedback and conversation in dynamic margins.
Now they need good content
this is very interesting.
To achieve ubiquity though - its Open Sourcei nature aside - I would have thought that it needs to be in an even more universal format (e.g. on the web, etc). Flash can be downloaded across platforms, but even then some people reasonably point out that having to download it in order to access rich content is both a chore and a constraint.
While something like issuu only uses boring old PDFs, essentially, it transforms the useri experience, and, crucially, doesn't require (for most people) the downloading of new software.
That said, I hope Sophie catches on, but it only will - I imagine - when there is a lot of interesting content that demands that people download Sophie. Having an interesting medium is only half the battle won. So, they need a snowball effect.
Matt Wootton
folly Communications Manager