Ach. What a terrible word, anyway. Something tells me that these things have been around for a while but I’m just now hearing about them. Perhaps first there were “rumors” and then “buzz” and then it was the “next big thing.” I don’t know.
Looks like Anne Rice is going to be putting one out, one of these “video book” things. Here’s what she had to say about it:
“Vook represents a very exciting combination of new technological elements that I think is long overdo in publishing…”
Long overdue? Really? This seems something like attaching a steering wheel to a horse’s neck and claiming it’s an improvement because it’s more like a car.
Are we really at this place right now? How did simply absorbing oneself in a text become not enough? If this is how we “get folks to read” I think I’ll pick up a different obsession. Like whac-a-mole tournaments or something.
I’m waiting for Vook 2.0, or the Vouk as it will be called. It has text, video, hyperlinks, and will send a hooker to your hotel room. (Perhaps with the latest copy of Elle’)
Adapt or die, I say. I’m all for multimedia channels to give “readers” choices or avenues to the story, which can come in infinite forms. I’ve also long been a music & lit junkie, so adding video to the mix seems like a logical next step.
Of course, as a reader, I personally prefer old-school books on real live paper, but as a writer/artist/producer/performer I’m open, willing and able.
If you think about it, books used to be produced via hand transcription in the middle ages. Then someone invented a printing press. Another fellow came up with the idea of moveable type. Things were really rolling, but it took hundreds of years. Imagine the amazement when the first illustrated book came out, then the first one with PHOTOGRAPHS! But wait, then there were COLOR PHOTOGRAPHS. Lots more change, but it wasn’t taking hundreds of years any more, more like decades.
We are still experiencing the same types of change, but at an ever quicker pace. I agree with Jesus, we have to adapt. You can ignore progress, but at your own peril.
This is “progress?” I don’t know what pictures and photographs have to do with reading….most of the books I read don’t have them and don’t need them. I will conceded that this thing is something different, a hybrid, if you will, but I would definitely not call this something we “have to adapt” to. This isn’t about being a luddite. I’ve checked out Jesus Angel’s site and I dig it, as a multimedia project seems really cool.
My main gripe here is the perception that this kind of thing, as Anne Rice said, “is long overdue.” Hogwash. It’s multimedia and might be fun and cool, but it is in no way an “improvement” over the experience of reading. It’s something else. It’s multimedia. The process of reading text by itself is not a deficiency of technology.
Here is some progress:
http://www.newnovelist.com/links/WritersLinks1.html
Sounds like a step back from TV, and a step up for retards with no imagination.
Well, I wasn’t talking about comic books. I was thinking more along the lines of when Sandburg got his brother-in-law, Edward Steichen, to put photographs of Lincoln memorobilia on the first pages of those famous biographies, that type of illustration. I’m sure that seemed unusual at the time.
And even if it isn’t anything anyone here is interested in, no need to stoop to calling names like “retards.”
I think I agree with Pat though, these embelishments are by no means essential to the process of reading. No more than 3-D is essential to watching television or cinema.
“midnight falls on the cool”
mind-enhanced masses
in barroom communion
raise empty glasses
in half-assed salute
to karaoke jesus
with his new
crown-of-thorns
tattoo
singing the crucifixion
blues
over the simulated
pinfall of emulated
bowling alleys
while a reality show
rolls on a muted
flat-screen
high-d TV
modern art masterpiece
hanging from
a faux-brick wall—
midnight falls
on the cool
me
nodding my head
in sync
to the microchip-driven
hip-hop noise
watching you
thumbing
a silver cellphone
in abstract
communication with
your best friend
who you
haven’t seen
in 99 days
as she sits alone
5 tables away
Thanks very much for checking out the 3xbad site, Pat. I’m with you (and David) 100%: “It’s something else. It’s multimedia. The process of reading text by itself is not a deficiency of technology.”
My take is not that books are deficient at all, but the way people choose to take in stories has changed w/ e-networking and web-based music/video technologies. Whether this is “progress” or not is beside the point. I think if we’ve got the tech (for non-techies) and can apply the vision, let’s say, of our lit ideas to multimedia, then why not? Using alternative publishing paths won’t diminish the value of the words on the page, but it may lead to “readers” who would otherwise never know about the work.
To “j gutenberg,” I say: What does intimacy look like in a culture of violence, hypocrisy and e-communication?
intimacy? oh yeah, the “intimacy” is flashing by on the muted “reality” TV show. You know, “The Bachelor”… Don’t you have a burning curiosity to know which woman Jake picks?
Who is Jake?
ja. jake? he’s the one w/ the snake.