bLink

So after two days of talk about the future of the book at the Tools of Change conference, I spent my last few hours on the west coast in San Jose's Museum of Technology, known as The Tech. The museum (and it's gift shop!) were fantastic, packed with the American innovators of tomorrow, pushing buttons, learning about technology and the environment, creating avatars with effortless ease. I learned that the community of websurfers (currently a little over one-and-a-quarter billion people) grows by ten people every second, that I have enough dust accumulated on my body to have me banned from any clean room and that I do not make a good virtual bobsleigh driver.

Innovation was not thick on the ground at the conference. US publishers (who I discovered were there in good numbers) are in an arms race to digitize as much of their content as quickly as possible, strike the best deals with google and amazon and pump out ebooks into a market which seems to be growing at a good rate for them. "Authors and genres are the brand" was the mantra - a view that we only partly buy into at Penguin UK. There was little talk of user generated content, or tagging, or wikis or blogs - in a market where profit and loss are the only meaningful measure of success it seems that figuring out how to commodify community is either not high on the agenda or simply too hard to figure out.

But there was one magical moment of innovation which had the audience on their feet and applauding. Manolis Kelaidis a young designer/artist from Greece presented his project at the Royal College of Art's Summer Show, called bLink. By printing ordinary paper with conductive ink and inserting some clever circuitry in the binding of a book Manolis has created a book-to-internet interface which has, potentially, some fascinating applications. He demonstrated touching the words Mona Lisa to launch a google image search, iTunes played a song when he touched the title printed on a page, touching a picture of a giraffe caused a computer to say the words "It's a giraffe!". After his demonstration and the standing ovation that followed, Manolis was besieged by printers, publishers and technology companies who all thought they could see something they could do with his technology - he was completely overwhelmed. You can read more about it here and here and I'll try and post a video of bLink in action soon - but at a conference where process, systems and revenues were the talk of the floor it was wonderful to see how a beautifully designed and engineered object - a book that linked the digital and print worlds -  became the talk of the town.

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

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Comments

[Michael Jensen]

The magic of that moment is hard to describe, though you've done a great job, Jeremy.

Manolis did a great setup, too, describing the constraints he set for himself for the project, constraints that were seemingly impossible: to be able to touch a passage on a printed page, and get more from your internet-connected device; to have it printable and thus mass-producable; to have the book able to integrate with the digital environment; to make the experience easy and fruitful for the reader.

It seemed impossible. And then Manolis turned the page, pressed the paper, and brought up, with just a touch, the Google page of Mona Lisas. The hundreds of publishers in the room gasped in awe, and applauded.

Later in his talk, as the implications became clear, the energy in the room was palpable.

Manolis brought together great design, materials science, a programmer's sensibility, and a love of the book, into a radically appropriate physical interface.

It could have profound implications, if it takes off as I believe it should. Implications on Print On Demand strategies (not being bLink-able), implications on editorial responsibilities (more direct engagement with the content, its meaning and purpose, and thus its new options), on designer requirements (ditto), and on the book as a fundamentally designed object.

When microbatteries, microprocessors, and micro-interfaces can all be printed dirt cheap, all sorts of interesting things happen. Manolis demonstrates how this can be elegantly integrated into a bound, beautiful book.

I look forward to the video!

[Mark Thwaite]

Thanks for this Jeremy,

For further -- often more general and theoretical but always excellent -- discussion of the issues relating to the future of the book (and I'm sure you guys know the site) take a look at if:book --
http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/

[Eoin Purcell]

'"Authors and genres are the brand" was the mantra - a view that we only partly buy into at Penguin UK.'
Jeremy,
Could that be because the Penguin brand itself is perhaps one of two really powerful publishing brands?

Can't wait to hear more of this!
Eoin