Gruber just linked to Chip Kidd on
A Brief Message.com, who, when asked to
comment on what effect he thinks the Kindle will have, if any, on book design as we know it said, "none." I happen to agree with him. But then he goes on to make a really bad analogy...
I totally agree with his assessment that the Kindle will most likely change nothing—except maybe how hard the next in what will inevitably be a long line of companies trying to release an eBook reader and failing—tries to actually create something revolutionary, which my friends, is what it's going to need to be to make it so that our great grandkids are saying "you used to read books? Tee-hee." But:
The book will not be replaced. I mean, an ancient scroll was essentially the same as a book, only written on 1 really big sheet of paper (or what-material-have-you), and rolled up. The only improvement we have made on it in thousands of years is that we cut the paper up smaller pieces and stacked them, and invented the binding process, and maybe the dust-jacket, oh yeah, and then we added silly photos on the backs of ourselves. That's a dot-upgrade, ain't it?! Ok, finally on to the bad analogy.
Kidd's analogy: [my notes in square brackets]
"PS: What no one seems to get through their thick skulls, even after untold millions of dollars have been wasted on the concept: PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO READ BOOKS ON A SCREEN. Why is that so hard for someone as obviously smart as Jeff Bezos to accept?" [I agree so far. That is, until kids born in the early 90s and beyond make up the largest portion of the book buying/reading public, maybe they'll be so used to reading on screens that sitting with a paper book just feels wrong.]
"The reason the iPod took off is that music was never meant to be a “thing” in the first place." [And ideas were??]
"It was born as pure sound, and pure sound is what it has returned to. But books were always physical objects, and the printed book as a piece of technology has yet to be improved upon. And won’t. Certainly not by something that looks like a prop from Charlie’s Angels" [woot!]
"and has, are you ready, a whopping ONE typeface. For everything!" [This really is very sad!]
"Yay! For further explanation as to why this is doomed, go to Amazon’s own website and read Kindle’s Customer Reviews. Ouch. Caveat emptor!"
The problem I have with his P.S., is that he writes:
"The reason the iPod took off is that
music was never meant to be a “thing” in the first place. It was born as pure sound, and pure sound is what it has returned to. But books were always physical objects, and the printed book as a piece of technology has yet to be improved upon. And won’t."
His analogy is bad.
He's claiming music (is to) books. As in, he's saying music and also books are both the purest form of the respective expression at hand. I think what he's missed is that music (is to) ideas or information, not books. Better expressed I think: CDs (is to) books, vinyl (is to) books, or cassette (is to) books, etc. The book, just like the cassette tape, is the transmission medium.
The core essence of a book is its ideas not its glyphs on paper, bound and dust-jacketed, just as the core essence of the CD is its music, and not its plastic and binary laser pock marks.
The "book" is the medium for thoughts/words/ideas. To move past his poor analogy and onto his next statement, he's saying the iPod got it right because it took the unnecessary plastic object (the CD, et al.) out of the way, and gave us a method of removing that middle-man, so to speak, and with the pressing of a button, pour the audio waves into our ears.
Thus, an equivalent breakthrough in the delivery of the written word (and believe me when I tell you the
$399 Kindle proper, is not it, sorry, JB),
might look more like the REMOVAL of the book, and possibly the written word altogether, from the equation, and deliver the IDEAS of an author, or a group, or a people into our minds directly. Just get the artifact out of there. I'm sure I don't know how to accomplish that—otherwise I'd be off in my private R and D lab right now pre-paying for generations of my family-to-come's orthodontia, higher education, and first home down payments. (I realize that the flow of a text, slowly [not talkin' to you Superfast!], over time, is part of the allure of books, I love them too, don't get me wrong.)
Let me put it this way, do you remember this scene in
The Matrix?
Neo looks over the roof, and his eyes focus on the helicopter.
Neo : Can you fly that thing?
Trinity : ...Not yet.
She takes out a cellular phone, and calls Tank, who is back at the controls.
Tank : Operator.
Trinity : Tank, I need a program for a V-212 helicopter...Hurry!
Tank finds one, and presses load. Trinity's eyes flicker with REM for a few moments, and then snap open.
Trinity : Lets go.
That's what the iPod of iDeas would work like. Yes, that would change the way we design books, and the way we learn. Fantasy? Dunno. Am I wrong?
Let's see if my postpartum brain can put together a coherent thought.
Reading a book for pleasure, not information, is more like playing music than listening to it. I don't want to be injected with War & Peace, I want to experience reading it, and possibly re-reading it.