What did Johannes Gutenberg invent?
Most people would answer that Gutenberg invented the printing press, but that is incorrect. What Gutenberg invented was even more ingenious, he invented a Movable Type System.
The genesis of printing press technology can be traced back thousands of years to wood block printing in China. So next time you have a book in your hands, rectangular in shape with black printing on white paper . . . think about the fact that its technology is thousands of years old. The invention of the Kindle innovates on the acquisition and transportability of text, but the book paradigm remains the same, text on rectangular pages.
In a time where multimedia and mobile internet are tried and true technologies, what is the meaning of a book?
The way I look at it, since the dawn of men, the purpose of a book has been one of the following two:
- Knowledge transfer (e.g.: Polya’s How to Solve it)
OR - Entertainment (e.g.: The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo)
(or a combination of the two)
Personally, I LOVE books. I like the feel of holding it in my hands, the act of turning a page, the smell of an old book, the look and feel of libraries, bookstores, or a stack of books; and recently, I have even started to write on books, making notes on the white space surrounding the writing. To me the experience of reading an engaging book is akin to an intimate conversation with the author.
But let’s not confuse the medium with the message. There’s still a charm in experiencing typing on a mechanical typewriter. I still have my dad’s Lettera 22, arguably one of the first portable writing instruments and a precursor of the modern-day laptop. But the book as we know it, rectangular shape, ink on paper is a shrinking business opportunity, soon to become a niche opportunity.
Just like any shift, we have some attempts that give us an insight into a more sensory rich experience when it comes to “books at large”:
- vook.com is publishing rich-media ebooks, richer than Kindle and Kindle-type publisher;
- AdCracker has been publishing for many years a hybrid Web site/CD-Rom freemium service, excellent content, interesting medium;
- The Domino Project by Seth Godin is a promising new business model, but no technical innovation; at least not yet;
- CafePress.com and Lulu‘s print-on-demand efforts have yet to dominate the marketplace;
- eBookBurn.com removes any and all technical barrier for anyone with content to publish for Kindle and Kindle-like devices;
- I am sure there are others, and the good ones are either under the radar, or are planning the way to ride and direct the wave.
Maybe this is the end of the business for books as we knew it. The web has indeed replaced a lot of the printing business. I see nothing wrong with brochureware sites; they serve their own purpose. White papers and case studies can only be found online where they get consumed, and paper user manuals are about to be extinct.
Rebecca Black’s phenomena has entertained us not only on video but also on the YouTube commentary, MP3, traditional media interviews and Op-Eds; all amplified by the Web.
- Knowledge Transfer: if any of us has a question on “how do I….”, a quick search on Google or Amazon will yield if not the direct answer at least a pointer to the answer.
- Entertainment: Seinfeld & Co. has entertained and continues to entertain us with not one iota of ink or paper being used, and it’s not available on Kindle either.
The book of the future has written itself off, the message is now free to pick the right medium for its context & timing, from Twitter to YouTube to more and more people sharing more and more of their creative genius in real time via photos, videos. . . so, what happens to authors in search of a book to share with the world? Maybe “author” is a too restrictive of a notion. We need to re(think+define) authors into content generators. The art of transferring knowledge or entertaining has expanded to include more tools (photos, videos, social media…) and platforms.
Ink on paper: how quaint!
Interesting and somewhat related articles:
- The End of Content Ownership
- Clever Algorithms: Nature-Inspired Programming Recipes
- Post-Artifact Books and Publishing (Update)
- The Last Hardcover (Update)
- How the long tail cripples bonus content/multimedia (Update)
___________
{Photography by: Thomas Guignard}
