Preserving formats
At the New York Times, Ashlee Vance recently reported on Ray Kurzweil’s efforts to bring the Blio platform to market.
Kurzweil attacks the e-reading space from a predictable perspective (existing e-readers have failed to maintain presentation formats), and that’s puzzling. I’d expect a well-financed inventor who sees a day when “We will transcend all of the limitations of our biology” would also see a day when we use each medium in ways that recognize its strength.
“Format as brand” is not new: companies like LibreDigital and Adobe have been hard at work trying to replicate the physical word in the emerging digital one. But as I wrote last fall, these efforts are built on a fundamentally flawed premise:
Readers want to address a need or solve a problem, not replicate the reading experience of a broadsheet, or an 8-3/8 x 10-7/8 magazine or a 6 x 9 book. New formats provide new opportunities, and defining the brand in terms of what worked in print certainly leaves the door wide open for disruption.
Existing content and companion e-readers fail to take full advantage of the potential value of the new medium, but a new viewer that better emulates the physical product is just as wrong. Kurzweil may provide a soothing option at a turbulent time, and on that basis Blio may succeed as a publisher-driven option. But it’s an interim option, not a solution.
First impression: yah right. Another grand idea to separate money from the mark. OK, sounds harsh but I am already saturated with formats and their limitations that are then imposed on me. In the interest of fairness I’ll read it again, slowly.
<interlude>
Done. I agree with your last paragraph. Even found the designer angle.
Short digested version of the blog entry.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/a-former-book-designer-says-good-riddance-to-print/
The blog entry; an essay with illustrations (the NYT squished them down to a logo).
http://craigmod.com/journal/ipad_and_books/
He has a valid point. Suggest using find/search in browser to traverse 357 comments. I used craig.
-dutch
Posted by
fairuse on 06/29 at 02:23 AM
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