Video: The Future of Reading, from The Agenda, TVO, Ontario
By Paul Biba
Here is a video of a tv show from TVO (Ontario). I haven’t seen it yet, but it has quite a distingushed guest list:
+ Cynthia Good is the Director of the Creative Book Publishing Program
at the Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, and the
former President and Publisher of Penguin Canada.
+ Keith Oatley is a psychologist at the University of Toronto. He also
writes fiction while researching how reading literature affects us.
+ Mark Federman is a researcher at the Ontario Institute for Studies
in Education at the University of Toronto.
+ Bob Stein is founder and Co-Director of The Institute for the Future
of the Book, and founder of The Voyager Company.
+ Bill Buxton is the Principal Researcher for Microsoft Research.
Thanks to Resource Shelf for the link.
December 19th, 2009 at 10:01 am
That video is informative and entertaining. The participants all had slightly different visions of the future of reading, but each one is a bright future. The moderator, despite the fact that he had never heard of “public domain books”, did an excellent job of asking the right questions, and including everyone in the discussion.
I would like to explore some of these issues in depth: for example, a large part of Bob Stein’s future of reading includes “World of Warcraft” — but is that really “reading”, or is that online interactive game playing? … For me, there is a world of difference.
The participants all seemed to agree that, in the future, devices will be far more advanced; and paper books (and “serious” literary novels), may not be abandoned entirely. Instead, they will be a small part of much larger and more complex reading ecosystem, that includes a high degree of interactivity.
This video mentions a fascinating 4-part series, Empire of the Word, narrated by Alberto Manguel, author of The History of Reading. It is free to view by Canadians, but it is unavailable online to U.S. residents.
Is this the swift and terrible payback for the U.S. customs agents arresting Peter Watts ?
Michael Pastore
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