With a rather large library at home and the prospect of moving house has become quite daunting.
As has the chance of finding stuff.
Famous last question: Where did I read that again?, followed by an hour's search across dusty shelves.
This has, of course, its own inimitable charm. Invariably I come across thoughts, ideas, stories that either I had forgotten about or that I had just simply not connected with.
However, as soon as I leave the house (a very regular occurrence), that entire library becomes useless.
So what if?
So what if there were a technological frogleap that would allow me to have that library with me all the time, allowing me to roam through at leisure on the train or the plane?
What if I could access all sources of information and all media, perform instant searches and combine text, music and video into one knowledge mega-library?
A laptop, you say?
Nah, not a laptop. Laptops are still far too appliation-centric (as opposed to content focused) Nah, not a Kindle, either. Too static.
Something that combines the flexibility and the colour of a magazine, the reading comfort of a book (or 1000 books -- without the weight), the charms of a Kindle (or so I am told, not owning one, but I have my doubts) the advantages of a laptop (film, music, searchability) as well as the potential of the new forms of converging media (did you recently visit the New York Times site?).
Well, according to Gizmodo, Apple (yes, I know, them again…) may be about to launch such a device. Much has been written about the Apple Tablet, but what got me animated here, is not so much the prospect of a possible near launch (February 2010), but more the prospect of media convergence in one device with a touch screen.
One thing in particular struck me in the article: the idea of putting school textbooks onto iTunes.
That would be a total game changer - for kids (think about those heavy satchels), for teachers (up-to-date materials), for bookshops (whoops…sorry, no good news here) and also for publishers (a new definition of the marginal cost of text book publishing).
Publishers would also be encouraged to release the long tail, their huge catalogue of books that have been out of print for years.
But most of all, once multimedia content becomes standard fare, tablet content will be to books what television has been for many years to travelogues: wildly more vivid and engaging. Just imagine your standard economics book with interactive, automatically updated graphics.
Whether it is going to be Apple or someone else, is beside the point. We are fast approaching the convergence of media.
If you add the recent evolution of e-paper (flexible screen technology) into the mix… we might just be at the beginning of an(other) information revolution.
Remember the live newspapers in the Harry Potter movies? Well, I have come to think that they are but a frog's leap away.
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