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Reading In Four Dimensions
This is a story about the future of publishing. It's a tale of how books are changing the internet, and how the internet changed reading.It's an exploration of digital and print, social writers and readers, a 17th-century blogger and a fake politician from a parallel universe. It's an explanation of why the publishing industry is about to change.This is a story about time. --Andrew Losowsky is the Books Editor of The Huffington Post
28 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 2, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 25, 2011
This is an interesting essay in a few parts that's worth getting hold of, even if you don't have a kindle - it's easily readable on various kindle apps, just because it's so slight.
I'm not so much interested in reviewing this - it's very good, and written in a clear, relaxed style - as just adding a few thoughts about it, and the idea of reading works that exist as timed, almost performance pieces, with the help of the internet. A lot of space in this essay is given to discussing a blog that contains Samuel Pepys's diary, developing out over a number of years. This can be treated like any other blog, and read all in one go after the act (or in various visits every few months, going back through the archives) or it can be followed through RSS feeds and so on.
But he also discusses fictional stuff going on on Twitter, and Alternative Reality Games, as things that only really work in the moment they're posted. I follow various fictional twitter feeds, but they're largely joke-based - I did follow the Such Tweet Sorrow project a while ago (an RSC thing where they got people to act out Romeo and Juliet on Twitter) but mostly more elaborately constructed Twitter things kind of pass me by. The ideas behind them often excite me, but the problem is - I use Twitter and stuff when I have time for it. I check it throughout the day, but in various moments where I'm catching up and only see what's just been posted. I have a job, and I can't dedicate my life to following exactly what's happening. Yes, to a certain level this can add to it - the idea that the work is unfolding in its own time, and not the readers, is kind of the whole point of it. But then there also reaches a point when readers with lives with schedules that don't fit around the work can't experience it, because going back through a Twitter feed after the fact is a different, clunkier experience.
What if you're in another timezone? I'm in the UK, and a lot of this sort of stuff is happening overseas. It's exciting and an interesting newish way for us to engage with work - but this sort of stuff needs to be thought about before we decide whether or not to tether our work to these reasonably inflexible systems. Do we want the people who can interact with our work in the way closest to how we intended it to be interacted with to always be those whose schedules are more like ours? Because that's one of the outcomes of using Twitter and other social media sites to present stories in real time.
I'm not so much interested in reviewing this - it's very good, and written in a clear, relaxed style - as just adding a few thoughts about it, and the idea of reading works that exist as timed, almost performance pieces, with the help of the internet. A lot of space in this essay is given to discussing a blog that contains Samuel Pepys's diary, developing out over a number of years. This can be treated like any other blog, and read all in one go after the act (or in various visits every few months, going back through the archives) or it can be followed through RSS feeds and so on.
But he also discusses fictional stuff going on on Twitter, and Alternative Reality Games, as things that only really work in the moment they're posted. I follow various fictional twitter feeds, but they're largely joke-based - I did follow the Such Tweet Sorrow project a while ago (an RSC thing where they got people to act out Romeo and Juliet on Twitter) but mostly more elaborately constructed Twitter things kind of pass me by. The ideas behind them often excite me, but the problem is - I use Twitter and stuff when I have time for it. I check it throughout the day, but in various moments where I'm catching up and only see what's just been posted. I have a job, and I can't dedicate my life to following exactly what's happening. Yes, to a certain level this can add to it - the idea that the work is unfolding in its own time, and not the readers, is kind of the whole point of it. But then there also reaches a point when readers with lives with schedules that don't fit around the work can't experience it, because going back through a Twitter feed after the fact is a different, clunkier experience.
What if you're in another timezone? I'm in the UK, and a lot of this sort of stuff is happening overseas. It's exciting and an interesting newish way for us to engage with work - but this sort of stuff needs to be thought about before we decide whether or not to tether our work to these reasonably inflexible systems. Do we want the people who can interact with our work in the way closest to how we intended it to be interacted with to always be those whose schedules are more like ours? Because that's one of the outcomes of using Twitter and other social media sites to present stories in real time.
August 15, 2011
Sections 2 and 4 were my fav.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews