More future of the book stuff

I am still stuck on this whole future of the book thing that I posted about yesterday. I can't get away from the fact that we are so focused on what's ahead that we don't anticipate the ramifications of if. For those of us who want to get a writing career going there are so many advantages to the written word going online. Just think, I can write an article for almost any publication around the world from any location around the world and get it to them in seconds and read it the moment it is 'published'. There are opportunities to get published, to start building a good 'published' portfolio available now that bypass the years that writers may have had to take to get to the same point in the past. But if by participating in that, we are inadvertently wrecking the things that made us fall in love with the written word in the first place, the book, the newspaper or magazines, well, aren't we missing the point? I am not suggesting that we do things differently, just consciously.

Googlebooks just made a deal to get a staggering number more books online.

Institute for the Future of the Book

I found this site recently when I was looking for something else. Affiliated with the University of Southern California, the Institute for the Future of the Book describes itself as 'a small think-and-do tank investigating the evolution of intellectual discourse as it shifts from printed pages to networked screens. There is a ton of information on their pages, a blog and links to a ton more information.

It's an interesting notion to ponder. Anyone taking the time to read this blog must be interested in the written word and also in technology. I love exploring new ideas in the arts- writing, music and visual art- and we now have the capibility to express ourselves in ever-changing multi-media. Blogs, ebooks, cellphone novels are just a few places that the written word has become a norm. As much as I like experimenting with the new, the thought of a world without books, newspapers or magazines is an alarming one.

If you are interested in this subject you should definitely take time to browse through the work of this think-tank. I will be doing just that myself.