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The Evolution of Reading In the Digital Age

Posted by Soulskill on from the can't-wait-until-we-need-to-patch-our-books dept.

Doofus writes "'Print is dying. Digital is surging. Everyone is confused.' is the subtitle of Craig Mod's thoughtful discussion aboutthe evolution of reading material from printed dead-tree to flowing digital content. I stumbled upon his blog post from a related NYTimes article, Former Book Designer Says Good Riddance to Print. He breaks reading material down into two basic categories: 'Formless,' in which the content and meaning of the writing has no dependency on presentation, and 'Definite,' in which layout and presentation play a role in conveying meaning. Mod makes the point that as digital presentation improves, devices such as the iPad will bring authors newer and improved platforms upon which to display Definite content. Despite this, he says, some works will be better consumed in physical print because 'They're books that embrace their physicality or have stood the test of time. They're the kinds of books the iPad can't displace because they're complete objects.'"

5 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. Ahh. by FooAtWFU · · Score: 4, Funny

    Like pop-up books. Or scratch-n-sniff.

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    The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
    1. Re:Ahh. by Phoobarnvaz · · Score: 3, Funny

      Too bad Playboy & other men's magazines never developed the pop-up or scratch-n-sniff.

      --
      Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. - Charles M. Schulz
    2. Re:Ahh. by SirWinston · · Score: 3, Funny

      >Too bad Playboy & other men's magazines never developed the pop-up

      You must be using them wrong...

      --
      "It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."--Andrew Jackson
  2. Read this to someone in a third world country by voodoo+cheesecake · · Score: 2, Funny

    Save the books..... burn the ipads!

  3. I'm a digital reader and I say... by Giant+Ape+Skeleton · · Score: 4, Funny

    tl;dr ;-)

    --
    The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.