Future of Reading’s Present Filled With Smart Concept Videos

With the success of the Kindle, Nook, Sony readers, and tablets like the iPad, it seems like electronic books have finally arrived. But I think we’re actually still stuck in between two developmental phases on the way to the future.

For a long time, work on interactive books was about building either theory or prototypes. People talked about what multimedia reading might or could or should look like, and they built what were mostly one-off or low-volume projects using CD-ROMs, software applications, or the web.

Now, though, the theory and the prototypes have blended: even when designers and programmers don’t have the resources to put their ideas into production, they have the visual tools (and we have the device literacy) to make concept videos that explain clearly what we think/hope the future of reading will look like.

Here are three examples. The first (which you may have already seen) is from Microsoft, demonstrating its aborted Courier tablet project:

The second, which I think is very smartly done, is from the design consultancy firm IDEO. It details three concepts: “Nelson,” a reading application that incorporates commentary on and context for the primary text; “Coupland,” a reader with a built-in social- and sharing-network; and “Alice,” an interactive/participatory reading/gaming app where readers can “unlock” elements of a story by manipulating the device or traveling to geotagged places.

This third concept video, from Canadian new-media-publishing firm PadWorx, is for an interactive electronic version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula scheduled to ship this fall:

The breadth of approaches reflects the difference in backgrounds. There are relatively few people currently working in this space with a long history of working on interactive fiction. E-books — even future-concept e-books — assembled by traditional publishers or booksellers tend to look like a traditional publisher’s or bookseller’s idea of what a book ought to look like. Microsoft casts a wide net, but it’s fundamentally a computer software company; IDEO has futurists who work in design and advertising; PadWorx’s e-book is assembled by makers with a background in film, animation, and video game design, and it shows.

For another view of an actual (not projected/conceptual) application — one perhaps driven slightly more by a mobile app designer’s experience — look again at Stephen Fry’s wonderful, autobiographical myFry app:

I don’t think anyone knows exactly what the future of reading will look like. But I think we may finally have a handle on how we might try to see and explain it before it finally arrives.

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