I’m enjoying Nicholas Carr’s book ‘The Shallows, What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains‘ and wanted to ask a few questions related to it. His basic premise is that using the Internet has changed the structure of our brains, reducing our attention spans and effecting the way people read. With the ability to Google anything and skim through countless articles in our RSS readers, Carr is saying that people have lost the ability to enter a deep reading state. I can see his point, especially with the Millennials who have grown up surfing the web.
Assuming that Carr is on to something here, should we begin rethinking the “book” concept, what sort of experiences should be bundled and what level of content is appropriate for the modern brain? We were having an interesting conversation last night with a seasoned journalist and author of four books about “interactive books” in relation to the iPad apps that iiD has been producing (this one and this one). Our CEO Matt was saying that even calling them books is limiting in how we think about designing new user experiences. Obviously a familiar book metaphor helps people adopt new applications more quickly but I can see his point about needing to break away from old models to really innovate and take full advantage of the Internet, interactivity, rich media and social sharing.
Let’s make the argument that books are no longer efficient enough, sticky enough or consumable enough for many people now in and in the future. There will still be people who read books in print or ebook form but a growing crowd need another format to consume long form content. The issue of portability (people want to read on the toilet) is still relevant so mobile or tablet makes sense for now. But how should we show content? How much text can people read continuously? What other experiences like video or audio are needed? How should layouts and interactive flows change to suit the user accustomed to skimming before jumping to the next piece of content? How should hyper text be integrated effectively allow readers to jump backward and forward depending on their interest? The real question is how to focus a reader who suffers from this “Internet ADD”? At the same time, how can we make social sharing as natural in deep reading as it has become reading blogs and news articles online? Heading into dream territory, can artifical intelligence be developed which learns over time how we each read to provide as relevant “read” as possible? Should we Wikipedia-ify the experience to change the content with new perspectives or should it a historical document?
It’s important to understand that I’m not talking about dumbing down the reading experience so much as looking for new reading models that are fluid, visual, draw readers in and help them attain a deep reading experience that enables learning and concentrated thought. Building on the digital tools that we have, we’re interested in exploring new modes that don’t depend on the book and are a good fit with brains that are crying out for new ways to read. It’s time to burn the book if only to write a new chapter in helping people get smarter through reading.
– Lance Shields
Full disclosure; we make boxes for books and for physical digital media (CDs, DVDs, Flash). Digital versions of print have already marginalized the physical book and the information consuming habits of your Millenniumistas will perhaps accelerate this as well. At the end of the day the communication sphere (books, story telling, movies, wiki*, internet, newspaper, billboard, song, rumor, etc.)is fictional or non-fictional and some mixed and some indistinguisable with varying forms of print, image, video any varied delivery; book, movie, phone, tablet or as yet unknown; what comes next will not come into being with the express purpose of replacing anything (intently exploiting the inefficiency of books for instance) rather it will simply or not-so-simply innovate in form or delivery or content and then reorder things in much the same way movies impacted books (and other communication forms) over 100 years ago. The idea of Deep Reading (Deep Communicating) being a text centric copernican model is kind of silly when you think about it – why is text necessarily the center of any communication tool unifiying theory. Will literacy even be material to being informed in another 50 years? Will literacy even be something that the greater society values and what will it come to mean? Reading itself may see its time come and go within the greater society in the next 100 years.
Dan,
Interesting and thoughtful. Thanks for sharing your point of view on books. I suppose you’re right that deep reading may not be the same thing as being informed in the future. However, I think being able to focus on some piece of information for long enough to internalize it will always be key.
It will be interesting to watch the effects on publishing and on business of the continued high sales of Richard Dawkins’ new interactive book and what additional authors, publishers and brands will be pulled to try BookRiff when it formally launches in early Oct.
Then, to watch digital social books evolve, there’s Demibooks, Papercut, Tabletide, OnSwipe, Moglue, Rethink Books, Ideal Binary, Me Books, Push Pop Press (bought by Facebook… and, of course, Indeas in Digital