electro-textual

This help desk episode has been very “viral”: it reminds me of a good article on the future of the book, “The Book is Dead, Long live the Book“, from Priscilla Murphy. People have predicted the demise of the book for a very long time. In 1894, one writer predicted that the phonograph and the kinetograph would rapidly substitute paper-based text with audio.

Murphy explores and questions three themes,

1. rivalry between media, that they are competing for limited public attention, so every dollar spent on new media = a dollar taken away from books;
2. convergence, where the new medium affects the old, so that they combine, but cultural attitudes change more slowly than technology; and
3. complementarity, where each media may complement the others, even synergistically.

“Books are, finally, intricately interrelated to the rest of the media system – economically, socially, intellectually, even symbolically; and those who have envisioned or feared their wholesale removal from the system have generally underestimated that involvement. If one would predict the death of books, it is necessary to know how they live (Murphy).” 

Stephen drew our attention to an article predicting the demise of the CD; and i think the same issues are pertinent in this case. Except that music doesn’t need to be seen, so it’s true that the medium can continue to change more easily.

But, i don’t think that music sellers will ever be able to rely on every single person having their own portable music device with them. That would be like everyone bringing their own bags to the supermarket.

Imagine an artist selling music after a gig, desperate for that extra $10 .. “oh you don’t have your iPod with you? i’m sorry i can’t sell you our music because we don’t have it in any kind of physical form“.

PS: actually given the cost of USB sticks in ‘009, i was clearly wrong about this. At some stage a 1Gb stick will be as cheap as a blank CD. 

Infinite Thinking Machine .. i’ve just stumbled on this one somehow. Very snappy and engaging ideas for teachers. This crowd loves Google in a big way: they’re sponsored by google, but they talk about plenty of other things (social software, mashups, classroom ideas).

This episode taken from chapter five of their blog, Calculate This, which has plenty of ideas for using spreadsheets in class. Watch out for the Grade 5 kids sharing their formulas, and getting totally social about feedback on their work.

Anyway, their videos are good! Tight and professional editing, full of ideas. I’m signing up now for their regular headlines (rss).

oh there’s more: gotta view their take on myspace. Chris is funny – he says because he’s a Digital Immigrant, the teenagers will “give him the 411″, whatever that means.