Evolution of the Book

TLB Media Productions posted on May 09, 2013 16:31

It seems apropos that as our first topic of conversation, we follow up on the question we put forth (question & multiple choice answers found on our home page). What do you think books will look like in 20 years? Formulating the question, we debated what number of years to end the question with. The idea was to leave people with enough time to have a definitive opinion relative to the answers offered. For instance, had we only used 3 years, there’d be plenty of hemming and hawing, over the perceived pace of change, rather than the actual result of change ultimately envisioned. (Note: As this blog topic is being written, we have not yet ‘released’ the question we have posed into the wild and wooly world/aka www.internet. So we have not seen any of your answers). We’re guessing though, that no matter how far out in time we go that there will always be those respondents that will adamantly feel, that books will be books, as they always have been they always will be. Nothing wrong with that…really. We also suspect that those respondents answering that way are likely to be older (oh boy…let the stereotyping begin) and therefore are likely to be under reported, due to the fact that the question was posed on the internet…and…well…you know… ‘they’ probably aren’t AS tethered to the world wide web…(that was said well…right?). And, unless answer #1 turns out to be a landslide, the real interest lies in where the rest of you answered, because the fact of the matter is, the once stagnant definition of a book, is evolving before our eyes, which is pretty cool if you think about it(unless perhaps you’re a large publishing house).

It’s our view that a new genre of books is percolating up in the form of mixed media, currently most recognized in the form of textbooks, and some travel and children’s books, where there are such features as embedded video and audio. These applications of technology are just scratching the surface; this new mixed media genre is in its embryonic stage. It’s more a function of how quickly our imaginations can digest the possibilities, and authors of written works start viewing themselves as content providers, facilitators of information in a rainbow spectrum of color, rather than just black and white. As this genre gains traction, what we know to be a book…in 20 years…may hold more of a nostalgic feeling in our hearts then in our libraries…(If you’re thinking, No Way!... Ok, but just ask yourself…what about in 50 years?)

We’d love to hear your thoughts…

Evolution of the Book

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