And now for thoughts:
I actually rather doubt you we see eye tracking any time soon. But text 2.0 is here to stay and a lot more than that. Basically, the fact is that if someone digitized the library of congress and made it public, then someone would simpy need to send, say, a poor village in India a device like an ipad, for them to have access to the entire library of congress.
In fact, it is clear that ultimatly, all human text, all human music, all human video, will, be uploaded on the internet. So essentially someone will need one device, to access all of human knowledge. Even if it costs a couple of hundrents, it is still going to be a lot cheaper than having bought all that stuff in the old way. And even if people don't abolish copyrights just yet and/or nick everything through rapidshare,
even the stuff that is out of copyright, is still worth reading and is tons of data (that again, would costs thousents to buy). (Google for example, just uploaded over 100 years of the Popular Science magazine:
http://books.google.com/books?id=MC0DAAAAMBAJ&rview=1&source=gbs_navlinks_s )
Storage is also getting better and better. People in the future won't be able to simply "access" a library but also "have" the library if they want. Even if they never read it. And copy paste it to each other all over the place. Which is a good thing but it ensures that information won't get lost. No more any of that Alexandria crap.
Books Text (Books were just the storage device) is also going (is already) going to become much more dynamic. "Books" can now have movies, sounds and can link to each (aka what the internet already is). Isn't it annoying when in a science textbook or thesis there is a trucload of footnotes & refferences at the end of it? Well, its about time you can actually click on the refference and instantly go on "Page 28, mr.X 1980", rather than just being told to do so. "Textbooks" can simply update, rather than have new editions. (in fact the final edition can easily contain and all the previous history of it in it. Like all wiki articles do). Mathematical books can also run Mathematica-like programs on the background and solve the actual equations they describe, with any value you give them and so on.
And the nice thing is that this goes two ways. No more forced "famous" authors and publicing houses. Anyone can write a book and throw it out in the internet and anyone can receive it from it. Ultimatly the web is going to end up being an "omnibook" which will contain every subject in a different section of it, and everyone will be writing it. People will simply be pulling "pages" from it (yay, metaphors) and "binding" their little offline "books/libraries", in their devices.
Getting rid of books is actually not a bad thing. First off, it will save squirrel homes ^^, Second, I happen to agree with someone who said that this will make
books, special again.
I remember once, in a Top Gear episode or something, a guy who said when we will be having electric/hydrogen cars then this won't make fuel dissapear, rather it will be the best age for them. That's because it will seperate the true petrolheads, from those that simply used them to pick up groceries & move their selves around. When there are better, faster, cheaper designs around, then only those who really loved a x,y design, will want to keep it. Only those who really appreciated the engineering of how x tube connects y tube, and the human ingenuity that has gone into it, and the entire sculptural/mechanical work that is a fuel engine. The same way I like the steam engines in the British museum, not because I would ever want one to run my washing machine, but because they are nice. To look at. And the same way other (richer) guys & clubs build, reconstruct and maintain steam engines. The same way, you just know that guys like Clarkons etc, who
really liked cars will still have a garage full of DB7s and Ferrari's and such. And they will love them. (And of cource, only the masterwork designs will remain, and all the landas will dissapear).
The same way then, there's books. And there's
books. In most books, like twilight novels, the book form doesn't matter, they are just trying to fit a bunch of text, as cheaply as possible, in a bunch of pages. All those mass printed paperbacks, are exactly the kind of books that will be sending to the recycling centers. There are some books however, where the form matters. All these leathbound, embossed etc etc old books where they were carefully selecting their fonts and hand painted letters etc inside, or books where the author was fully aware of how big the book was exactly, and took care to make a layout, and they are works of art, only in their completed physical form. And those will remain.
So essentially, those who like information, are going to have lots of it, cheaply, and those who like *books* are going to have a new golden age of typography again where every bookshop is filled only with unique printing artifacts, thus everyone wins. Except those who don't like change, but they can go take a hike.
Nuff thoughts?
