To understand "e-books", maybe we need to think more about "books" and not "e"

 So I saw an exchange on Twitter between @hybridkris and mrch0mp3rs  concerning closed versus open formats for eBooks. They're a couple of smart guys and the discussion is important but it also got me thinking about the fact that maybe we to think a bit more about the "book" and its place in culture and history are and what the very real pros and cons of adding an "e" to that venerable medium may be. 

My interest in this dates back to at least 1999. I had recently left grad school and so things like the future of the academic monograph, libraries and academic journals were actually on my mind. Also on my mind was the struggle with what has to be left out when writing a book or paper and how what's left out so often forms a powerful context for not just the subject matter but for understanding the place and time that the author was occupying when they wrote the piece - critical information for being able to understand what their underlying viewpoint was. 

Robert Darnton (1,2)was always one of my favorite historians, so I read with interest his 1999 piece in the NY Times Review of Books, "The New Age of the Book." In that essay, Darnton makes a case for what I think is still one of the most compelling uses for e-books; academic publishing. He reports on the impact on library budgets of the ridiculous costs of academic journals and periodicals something that has corollary and deleterious on the amount of money that is available to spend on academic monographs - which, as anyone who has ever pursued tenure can tell you, are the lifeblood of that pursuit. 

Darnton also lays out how an e-book could be architected to provide the reader with a variety of layers of writing and knowledge that could be drilled down into at will. He sets the stage almost poetically:

"In the case of history, a discipline where the crisis in scholarly publishing is particularly acute, the attraction of an e-book should be especially appealing. Any historian who has done long stints of research knows the frustration over his or her inability to communicate the fathomlessness of the archives and the bottomlessness of the past. If only my reader could have a look inside this box, you say to yourself, at all the letters in it, not just the lines from the letter I am quoting. If only Icould follow that trail in my text just as I pursued it through the dossiers, when I felt free to take detours leading away from my main subject. If only Icould show how themes crisscross outside my narrative and extend far beyond the boundaries of my book. Not that books should be exempt from the imperative of trimming a narrative down to a graceful shape. But instead of using an argument to close a case, they could open up new ways of making sense of the evidence, new possibilities of making available the raw material embedded in the story, a new consciousness of the complexities involved in construing the past." (1) 

Darnton has now essentially created a new academic sub-discipline; the history of the book. Acting now as the Director of Harvard's libraries (srsly, how cool is that?), Darnton has published The Case for Books; a defense of the form that has endured for so long. In an article from Publisher's Weekly, it's clear that Darnton still holds to this idea of creating a multi-layer book - I still think this is a really compelling idea and one that needs more discussion (I also think its ironic that his book is available on the Kindle). 

Darnton now though has extended his interest to Google and its massive efforts to digitize millions of books. Two articles (1,2) layout both his concerns and the potential promises of such efforts. In a similar vein, he has also written on the future of the library in the digital age.  As an aside, a fav paper of mine by William Powers, Hamlet's Blackberry: Why Paper is Eternal, goes into even greater detail about not just the book but the physicality of the material itself. 

So what's my point in all this? Just that we leaped into "E-learning" without fully understanding or even trying to understand in many cases, what would, could or should be different about that experience than just "learning". Now we stand here, 10+ years down the road and we the "next" button and we have rapid templates and we have online, web-based smiley sheets for assessments that tell us as little about the learning experience as do their paper-based brethren. In short, we haven't come very far. 

Now, we are doing the same with e-books (and I fear, with virtual worlds but that's a different post). The book as both physical artifact and medium of knowledge has a rich and long history - that history and the affordances granted to us by its current incarnation should not be disregarded as we go forward with e-books but studied even more closely so that we can make informed decisions not just about format and construction but also about notions of authorship, the dynamics of note-taking (I LOVE his observation concerning the linkage of reading and writing), of sharing, of who should be legally able to digitize and distribute electronic books. All of these dynamics will shape the future of the book and it's "e" cousin. We need to be literate in all of them. Let's do some reading.   

Comments

[mark oehlert]

ok...thanks to all for the comments..you've all offered valuable insights....I did want to offer some addtl. input though...my thinking in writing this post was not to caution us against e-books or e-paper or e-ink but to caution us against assuming that any of those "e"s would be merely digital analogs to their paper-based brethren. My main argument is that our future of e-reading is more like "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" from Diamond Age than the current Kindle. Understand, I'm not knocking the Kindle but instead am urging us to see past it, to consider deeply, as I think Darnton does, as I think Stephenson does, how to design the future experience of reading.

[Kris]

There is this strange internal argument that I get into about the physical nature of the book and it's importance to me versus the electronic convenience of the e-book. I love holding a book. The tangible qualities are something always look forward to. Having said that, my Kindle is doing wonders for my posture.

The same applies to my attempts to live in a paperless world and how it continually challenges my love of the pen. No matter how much I try, I still find that writing notes in my notebook with beloved pen always trumps the electronic note taking. The only difference now is that my note taking skills now include the ability to quickly enter 140 characters into a text box that I can immediately share with the rest of the world.

I like to refer to Richard Baraniuk and his take on books in his TED talk "Goodbye, textbooks; hello open-source learning". His concept - an open source library that we can, to take Apple's campaign slogan, Rip, Mix, Burn new materials - is rather brilliant. Here is a link to his biography and TED Talk, if you are interested: http://www.ted.com/speakers/richard_baraniuk.html

Much like my notebook and pen, I don't want to see the demise of the book. I think it's a very important part of history. I would be very hard pressed to part with my William Gibson collection, Wisden Almanac or collected works of Shakespeare illustrated by Rockwell Kent. Somehow, I don't think my Kindle could replicate them in a respectable manner. The eBook, however, has a very relevant place and I think Mr. Baraniuk makes an excellent case for how it could be leveraged.

Oh, and to the example of the vinyl record...The CD and the MP3 ushered in a new way of listening to music. It gave the listener the ability to skip through the tracks to get to that one that they were looking for. The LP always required user interaction (you had to turn over the record) that somehow involved people, even if just a little, in the experience. People don't "come over to listen to the new record" anymore. Now it's point click, listen. That's kind of sad (although Dylan Jones, in his book "iPod Therefore I am", did suggest that the iPod was the ultimate mix tape).

[Jane Bozarth]

Interesting conversation Mark, as so much talk on this topic thus far has been whether e-books are as good as "real" books (much as has been the discussion of whether elearning is as good as "live", eh?). My own experience is that, yes, if it's a good read, I don't care how it's delivered. Love my Kindle!

I am concerned that on the one hand we are losing physical artifacts we may need again some day: Paper does tend to hold up better than digital material. (I'm recalling a moment several months ago when a former boss called to ask if I had a copy of a doc from 1998. I did, but retrieving it involved climbing Everest to find a floppy-disk drive.)

But on the other hand, I see the ebook as yet another vehicle for delivering content -- new ideas, learning, reading -- to those previously excluded. Live in a remote area where Amazon doesn't deliver? Can't afford the outrageous shipping charges incurred in most places outside the US? No library? Any child with access to (not ownership of) a web-enabled computer (or phone) can download free books from Google Books. Her teacher can download many others for US $10. As I often say about new technologies, it's breathtaking to consider the doors this could open.

Best,
Jane

[Koreen Olbrish]

So I'm not a historian, but an English teacher. I have between 2000-3000 books (the paper kind) at home. Thinking about reading, curling up with a book, pouring over my notes...I dream in paper. The physical act of taking notes, writing the words, highlighting text and passages...that's all part of the learning process for me. It's how I learned to learn, at least from books.

But that's changing. I get annoyed now if I can't highlight or edit a PDF file. More and more of my reading is online, whether I like it or not. The thing is...I don't think the act of reading is really different with an e-book than a paperback. Static text is static text, whether it's pixels or ink. The difference is starting to be the opportunities to make reading social, link text to sources that you can simply click to access, and the sometimes unfortunate result that editing for space isn't as much of an issue.

So. Two points. Paper books will eventually go away, or at least be viewed as antiquities like my vinyl albums. I've seen my kids grow up with different expectations of interaction with content, and although they still read books, they prefer more immersive learning experiences, and e-books provide that. My kids just simply don't have the emotional connection to paper that I do. But it's ok...as long as they are reading, analyzing, critiquing, learning, comprehending, disagreeing...I don't care what format their books take.

Second, just because digital formats don't necessitate as strict of editing, it doesn't mean they shouldn't be. Go back to the music example...vinyl records imposed space limitations that went away when tapes, but even more, CDs came onto the scene. The result was longer albums and more second rate songs to fast forward through. I still appreciate musicians that keep their albums focused and cohesive when I know they could easily burden us with their marginal songs. Editing is an important step in constructing focus and narrative, and shouldn't be ignored just because it can be.

And I'll admit that even as a reading fuddyduddy, I wouldn't mind Santa bringing me a Kindle. Honestly, I could use the shelf space.

[Mrch0mp3rs]

I like this guy Darnton.

Here's the thing. For me, the ability to annotate a book and share my annotations with others isn't that far off from the"piracy" that Darnton talks about in his Publisher's Weekly article. Perhaps the book industry feels that way, too, but they're missing the point if that's the case.

If anything the notion of having a digital work with federated annotations allows for a richer appreciation of the text. Unlike Cliff's Notes, the idea of being able to situate scholarly (or even pedestrian) discussion where the book is for each of us is a captivating one. And potentially, a way to get more people to read the work instead of just skimming the notes. At the same time, by treating these annotations as layers of the page, vs. on the page itself, you're not altering the original work -- which actually addresses the frustration that goes back to Voltaire.

And in the same way... abstracting one's manipulation of other works akin to a literary mashup that Darton talks about in his reading/writing link -- well, that's what people do right now, except they do it through copy-and-paste, without any provenancial information that delivers you back to the source. It would be awesome, even if Amazon, Sony or others can't make my notes sharable across a network, if they could at least allow me to see my highlights and annotations and provide in a variety of formats (APA for example) the actual citation information.

We're not talking brain surgery here, let alone legal implications -- we're talking about leveraging usability and usefulness to encourage a richer experience with the text.

So, in short.. um... yeah. Beard likey.