I don’t think we can begin to understand what reading in the future will look like. It may come to us through glasses we wear or through texts projected on our walls from libraries around the world. The printed word will always be with us. I don’t believe that books as we know them today will disappear. There is something about paper, our link with nature, that will keep all those treasured books in our midst.
Being given the possibility to find a book one wants to read is a pleasure, and an opportunity, that we do not enjoy in many parts of the world. This possibility comes with the availability of information. And information is often scarce outside North America and Western Europe. As we ponder today how some of us in the world have moved from lazily browsing through a bookstore’s shelves, to commercial websites identifying our tastes, in other parts of the world — take Lebanon, a historical capital of publishing in the region — our modes of discovery of books is most the time either pragmatic (the title I was told to read for a purpose), or straightforward (people around me told me a bout this specific title, and this is the one I ask my local bookstore to order when he does not have it). What we miss, and readers and the West take for granted, is the possibility to discover. While the challenge faced in the West is managing too much information, the challenge we face in the East is producing quality information.
The web has the possibility to offer many non traditional ways to connect and disocver, our identification as consumers, and the identifcation of our tastes exposes us to more books we might like, but deprives us from true discovery. It keeps us so well contained within the limits of pre-identified tastes, that we are no longer aware of them, and are less open to new things. From this perspective, the future of finding books has to take into consideration the need for true discovery, free, but well guided. It should follow the model of the physical independent bookstore, rather than the physical hyper-bookstore.
With he advent of self-publishing and the technology and platforms that have emerged to make this possible, we have already seen a massive number of new books coming directly from authors. They are publishing in digital format and using POD services to get their works into the marketplace. Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple iBooks have been leaders in facilitating this movement.
But readers are finicky and I have already heard many complaints through online forums about the poor quality of many self-published books.
I believe we have seen an extreme swing from big publishing houses producing books to authors producing their own. In the future, I believe the middle ground will involve an emerging industry of small and independent publishers or technology specialists, who will aid authors in publishing their works.
As many people now are used to “Google” or “Safari” for the searching of key-words, this seems to be the next way for the finding of reading materials. Many people are already using these same vehicles for the finding of “how to” videos, music as a reference for band classes, encyclopedia-like information on forums like “Wikipedia” for even class notes from a digitally published university lecture. The key to this is not only the title or author of the materials but now the use of Metadata or metatags which is embedded information within the digital file name that assists in the search for key words. Adding information about publishers, subject matter, date of lecture or just key terms that cover the salient points of the book or article all help in the search criteria being looked at by the reader.
In future search engines and web portals for reading materials and resources, the portal developer as well as the publisher needs to take careful consideration to this to ensure that their materials are found by the target viewers.
In this age of constant immersion into the digital realm, more and more people are using the digital devices for the exploration and education of them selves. As more and more content becomes more readily available, this method grows exponentially. It allows the young to see words during interactive experiences through gaming and start to formulate a visual language by the continual exposure. The schools adopting digital reading methods for text books provide an easy way to give information to the masses without the need to store volumes of materials. The pervasive use of visual reading mediums such as laptops, tablets, phones, etc. make the opportunity to carry many different books, magazines, reference materials and the like with them at all times for immediate and easy access. Publishing materials in the digital realm also allows the opportunity to get materials to the masses much easier than the shipping of heavy volumes. Third world countries can now access digitially published materials in their own language where this was cost prohibitive in the past.
This seems to be the logical path into the future for the easy mass distribution of reading materials.
While I think intelligent predictions of which books people will like will become more sophisticated over time, I think in the future the social element of reading will be a huge factor in which books people choose. People will form niche communities around their particular literary tastes, and use those communities to find new books. This is a good example of the long tail, where with the growth of Web 2.0 technologies, people can now find like-minded individuals across the world for any set of tastes and preferences.
Technologies are increasingly becoming ubiquitous and tangible. Instead of needing to visit a computing device in a fixed location to access digital content, people now carry around tablets and mobile phones and have access to content at any time and anywhere. While I think there will still be a place for e-readers in the future, I think we will increasingly be seeing information further and further integrated into the physical world. With the growth of augmented reality devices such as Google Glass, people may soon be reading virtual text by using contact lense-like devices to overlay it over the physical world. One might also imagine digital text built in to large-scale physical objects like walls, so people can navigate through a book much in the same way they move through physical installations like museums.
Strangely my initial thoughts about the “future” of books are almost always rather cynical – I instantly flash on images of myself as a child, breathing in the scent of a new book, lounging on the porch, luxuriating in that unmistakable rustling sound as I turn each page, or even that feeling of immense satisfaction when I underlined and starred a line that was somehow, in that moment, the answer I was seeking. Will this “future” world of books (a rather elusive category, isn’t it?) still allow these kinds of tactile memories that have played such an important role in an understanding of self and a love for the printed word? (emphasis on printed…)
Thinking about how people will find new books in the future necessarily makes me think about the future of bookstores. I adore the local independent bookstore (here in Tempe, that’s Changing Hands) and thinking about the changing landscape of publishing and the rise of digital books generally leads me to a dark place….will those bookstores become smooth Minority Report consumerist spaces in which I am identified as I walk through the door as a walking embodiment of my most recent purchases? An accent-less woman’s voice welcoming me to the store and asking me if I enjoyed the latest Paluhniuk? Will I be guided towards items that an algorithm has already decided I will enjoy rather than freely wandering through the aisles, pausing to run my fingers over a deliciously textured cover and stumbling upon a new author? I know that I don’t want to lose the feeling of strolling through that space, the scent of the books themselves, or the opportunity to chat with that one clerk whose encyclopedic knowledge is deserving of reverence. Maybe I’m too pessimistic.. maybe the future of books (and bookstores) will bring many new readers into the fold who do not find the local scene as romantic and endearing as I do… or maybe we’ll end up with a store bursting with poorly written self-published erotica and teen dystopias that lack the complexity and subtlety of those authors that may not make it into your algorithm..