gazette | theater | bistro
Dead Tree Bookstore
Welcome!
this page
the shelves
Featured Ideas: usability gurus
Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen
| Ricci Street
< Port 80 < Lighthouse
|| search | sitemap | help gazette | theater | bistro |
| | |
|
|
No doubt printed books will survive the Internet just as live theater survived movies and TV. At the turn of the millennium, however, only a tiny dwindling fraction of human information was in ink-on-paper books.
I say dwindling because most of the information available at this bookstore is exactly the kind that the Internet will suck out of books. Already, the book publishing industry is feeling the effects. The economics of distribution don't work anymore. Napster should have scared the publishing industry.
Take, for example, textbooks. It's not just a question of delivering them cheaply and quickly online. The amazing resistance from teachers, under the guise of "I love the feel of a book", comes from a deeper need: to control. To be the center of attention.
"The Shroud of
Lecturing"
by Stephen E. DeLong
First Monday, Vol.2 No.5, May 5, 1997
At a fundamental level, the Web challenges the authority of the professor in the classroom by democratizing information. It shifts the focus from production and delivery to customer and content -- from professor and lecture to student and information.
What will be in books a hundred years from now?
The world will hold several times the six billion humans currently alive. Given how geopolitical socioeconomic development proceeds, many of them may live much as Americans did in the backwards 20th century, dependent on analog media for information and entertainment. That's assuming sufficient literacy; twenty to thirty billion is a lot of people to feed let alone educate.
Our developed world, if it survives, will use books (bound, printed paper) for images and important words. From calligraphy to lithography, paper will be part of artworks. We will also use books for important words for limited audiences.
Sacred
literature like the Bible and the Koran will feel more sacred for being
printed.
Connoisseur
editions, like fine wine, will never go out of style.
Family
memorabilia like scrapbooks will get passed around this generation and down
to the next.
Vanity
publications like the founder's original poems will get distributed at his
retirement celebration.
Milestone
documents like birth, marriage, educational, and death certificates will
have commemorative paper versions.
Paper in general will still find its place in the bathroom and kitchen and as decorative accessory throughout our living and working spaces. Handwriting will still be important; it just won't get done much on paper. We'll still occasionally scribble notes on paper, I suppose, though writable paper may be very expensive. Art students will still use it, just as they use fine expensive papers today.
Handmade paper will still be an art form and an interesting science experiment for students.
I'm running out of ideas here; I'd appreciate your suggestions about what paper might still be used for in a hundred years.
I do read printed books. I'd rather read them online, where I can make the print bigger, search the text, copy passages with a couple of keystrokes, and annotate the passages. But if they aren't available in useful digital form, I settle for the relatively useless printed form.
The following books are those I have ordered and for the most part read in the past couple of years. Many of them are excerpted on Ricci Street, as I've indicated.
Clicking on the titles below will take you Amazon's web site, where you can order the books. They do a far better job of merchandising than I can, so go to Amazon to learn more.
Because Ricci Street has an account in Amazon's Associates Program, a portion of your purchase will return to Ricci Street to help pay for the server space. Thank you.
Tip | Searching will take you to the Ricci Street page where this book is referenced.
The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions
by Thomas Kuhn
The
Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe
by Elizabeth L. Eisenstein
The Art of
Memory
by Frances A. Yates
The Memory
Palace of Matteo Ricci
by Jonathan Spence
The
Mismeasure of Man
by Stephen Jay Gould
Genome
by Matt Ridley
Darwin's
Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life
by Daniel Clement Dennett
Consciousness
Explained
by Daniel Clement Dennett
Guns,
Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
by Jared Diamond (first)
The
Third Chimpanzee
by Jared Diamond
The
Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without
Design
by Richard Dawkins
Unweaving
the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (go here first)
by Richard Dawkins
Climbing
Mount Improbable
by Richard Dawkins
Trilobites of New York: An Illustrated Guide
by Thomas E. Whiteley, Gerald J. Kloc, Carlton E. Brett
The Map
That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology
by Simon Winchester, Soun Vannithone
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
by Steven Johnson
The
Cluetrain Manifesto
by Christopher Locke, 1999
"95 Theses" from The Cluetrain Manifesto
#7. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.
Blown to
Bits
by Philip Evans and Thomas S. Wurster
The
Diffusion of Innovation
by Everett M. Rogers
Creative
Destruction: Why Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the
Market--And How to Successfully Transform Them
by Richard Foster, Sarah Kaplan
The Living Company
by Arie deGeus
No Logo:
Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies
by Naomi Klein
The
Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business
by Alfred Dupont Chandler
Information
Rules
by Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian
The
Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic
Thinkers
by Robert L. Heilbroner
Amusing
Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
by Neil Postman
Competitive
Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors
by Michael E. Porter
2003
Guide to Literary Agents: 600+ Agents Who Sell What You Write
by Rachel Vater (Editor)
Digital
Copyright
by Jessica Litman
Authors
and Owners: The Invention of Copyright
by Mark Rose
The
Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World
by Lawrence Lessig
Code
and Other Laws of Cyberspace
by Lawrence Lessig
Darknet:
Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation
by J.D. Lasica
XML, HTML,
XHTML Magic
by Molly E. Holzschlag
New Riders, 2001
Mapping
Web sites: digital media design
by Paul Kahn and Krzysztof Lenk
The
Evolution of Wired Life: From the Alphabet to the Soul-Catcher Chip-How
Information Technologies Change Our World
by Charles Jonscher, 1999
Weaving
the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by
its Inventor
by Tim Berners-Lee, Mark Fischetti (Contributor), Michael Dertouzos, 1999
The
Control Revolution: How The Internet is Putting Individuals in Charge and
Changing the World We Know
by Andrew L. Shapiro, Richard C. Leone, 1999
The Silent
Language
by Edward T. Hall
Information
Ages: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Computer Revolution
by Michael E. Hobart, Zachary S. Schiffman
Don Norman wrote The
Design of Everyday Things. You should read it if you're going to make
webs. His latest book is
The
Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So
Complex and Information Applicances Are the Solution. (The paperback
will be available in October 1999.) From the Preface:
Today's technology is intrusive and overbearing. ... The problem is that ... the technology is the easy part to change. The difficult aspects are social, organizational, and cultural.
Don Norman is an executive consuultant in human-centered design in the Nielsen Norman Group, a user experience consultancy. He is former Vice President of Research at Apple Computer and Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego.
Don Norman's person-centered motto for the 21st century:
People Propose
Science Studies
Technology Conforms
Jakob Nielsen has been called:
number 6 of The Web's 10 Most Influential People (AnchorDesk)
"the guru of Web page
usability" (The New York Times)
"the next best thing to
a true time machine" (USA Today)
"the smartest person on the Web"
(Ziff-Davis Network)
"a real guru" (CNET
The Computer Network)
"among the Web's most recognized
human-interface experts" (WebWeek)
"not yet as famous as
Elvis" (CONTENTIOUS Magazine)
Jakob Nielsen is a
principal of the Nielsen Norman Group, a user experience consultancy. Until July
1998, he was a Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer. Jakob writes the
bi-weekly Alertbox column on Web
usability. His most recent book is Designing
Websites with Authority: Secrets of an Information Architect.
Neither Nielsen nor Norman has many graphics on his web site. Find out why.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
