Five hundred year old technology (books) is just too slow for the Net. The act of printing, storing and shipping millions of books takes too long for a secret to ever be in a book again.
More.
Books are souvenirs. No one is going to read Potter online, even if it’s free. Holding and owning the book, remembering when and how you got it… that’s what you’re paying for. Books are great at holding memories. They’re lousy at keeping secrets.
Someone recommended a book to me yesterday, and it was fun for me to watch my own revulsion at the idea. I grew up in the thrall of books, literally a worshipper.
More interesting than Harry Potter is the phenomenon of The Cult of the Amateur, whereby Ludditism becomes a Shaker cult, doomed not by the book’s (and the movement’s) effete idiocy but by its inability to engender new acolytes. Even so, the book should prove especially popular on library shelves and remainder racks, where the most passionate book worshippers are to be found.
In the planning stages for Real Estate Weblogging 101, I made an effort to find ways of connecting electronic publishing to paper publishing. But then I had an epiphany: The work of the mind is documented on the nets. Publishers desperately cling to the idea of holding ideas for ransom by chaining them to atoms, but the Djinn is already out of the bottle — to call to mind another cult desperately clinging to the past. Prometheus has broken his chains — to recall our own future-loving creed — and the gift of mind surges forth in pandemic pandemonium.
On the nets, a new idea is published instantaneously across the globe. It is accessible to billions, if they seek it, at a negligible carrying cost. It can be linked to every discoverable supporting and countervailing resource and vetted by the intense scrutiny of thousands of hypercritical experts. Net-based “books” are revisable and extensible at will, with no delay and no lingering inventories of obsolete stock.
Shed a tear at graveside, if you will, but facts are facts: Books are a dead letter.
Technorati Tags: disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
Marc Grayson says:
This is amazing…
“The work of the mind is documented on the nets”…
Let’s keep this going
–Neural Networks
Greg…your definetely touching on applied neural networks in comp science…these “connections” across a sea (library) of electronic docs to produce your net-based book…dynamic, always current, inter-related.
–Manual vs Automated.
Such a net-book would not be manually created nor maintained…rather there exists clustering, unsupervised learning to self-maintain your net-based book. (Prometheus has broken his chains)
–Index (automated) of your Net-based book.
Natural Language Processing…noun phrasing, comes to mind. Given your post, meaninful phrases “extracted” of
— “Real Estate Weblogging 101”
— “paper publishing”
— “pandemic pandemonium” … meaningful phrases.
— Automated Thesaurus
Assist with information overload and vocabulary differences across authors of your net-based book…i.e “electronic publishing” and “digital publishing” could be considered synonymous.
— Browsing / Searching
Your net-based books could be a “long read”..search yes…browsing implemented with self-organized maps (SOM)…search term first then related terms/phrases from a thesaurus or concept space are presented (graphically) to give me a sense of browsing…to further drill down to docs.
— Research…
A little dated, but research down the road from Phoenix at the Univ of Arizona (Tucson), Artificial intelligence lab.
http://ai.eller.arizona.edu/go/intranet/papers/Internet-98.pdf
http://ai.eller.arizona.edu/go/intranet/papers/A_Scalable-98.htm
Sounds like a master’s thesis for someone…
July 20, 2007 — 11:32 am
Louisville Real Estate says:
This is so true, and Seth Godin would definitely know – especially as someone who has sold millions of books.
July 20, 2007 — 4:01 pm
Brian Brady says:
Whoa, Greg! Giving a friend a book is more meaningful than sending him a link.
Books are permanent while cyberspace can be folded, spindled and mutilated more easily. I get the premise but the conclusion is shaky. The blook lacks real credibility because of its ability to be edited at a whim.
I’m as geeky as the next guy but the book is so much more portable and convenient. Call it packaging; it’s the reason we pay $1.09 for the stuff we get for free out of the tap.
July 20, 2007 — 9:29 pm
Teri Lussier says:
I hope you are wrong.
Brian said it, books are portable and convenient; they are also private as people aren’t nearly as likely to interupt your reading in public with a book, except briefly and politely. A laptop is an invite to look over your shoulder- “whatcha doin’?”
I agree ideas grow and spread online in ways that books never could, can, or will, but books engage my senses in a way the computer never will. You can smell books, feel books, hear the pages turn. You take your time with a book. It’s a great experience. Online work just isn’t the feast for the senses a book is, although the brain can gorge.
I want both when I want them. Peacefully co-existing. I want to have my cake and eat it too.
July 21, 2007 — 7:23 am
Tom says:
I can not imagine books disappearing. While the internet is where I get most of my information and where I spend most of my time, books are where I go to get away.
Curling up with my laptop reading a pdf file of my book of the week is not like having the comforting hold on a real book. Dozing off with the book on ones belly is not the same as the laptop burning a hole through ones sheets.
While for the day to day work world books can be dead, for those few hours we get outside of the daily grind, books will remain a best friend.
July 21, 2007 — 9:35 am
Tom says:
One other point, for those that follow Harry Potter and the craze. If you are of that mind, there are many places where you can download a pdf of the new Harry Potter book. But few will go that route, instead setting records by buying the book.
While Seth feels they are placeholders of memories, the actual reading of a book is still far superior to reading off of a computer screen for long periods.
July 21, 2007 — 9:37 am
Greg Swann says:
Brian, Teri, Tom:
I said: “The work of the mind is documented on the nets.”
Books will not vanish, no more than farriers have vanished. But for doing the work of civilization, books are obsolete, much as well-shod horses are obsolete for transportation.
Marc:
I think you saw more than I said, but you’re definitely pointed in the right direction.
July 21, 2007 — 9:53 am
Brian Brady says:
I just returned from a picnic with a lot of PhD’s. I’m often shunned at these heady parties because I’m… well…commercial. I threw up this trial balloon to see what would happen; they invited me back.
Oh..yeah…my brain hurts.
July 21, 2007 — 8:33 pm
CJ, Broker in L A, CA says:
I think Teri is on to something with the “privacy factor”. If I’m reading something on screen, it’s right up there for all the world to see. Looking at the pages of a book feels more like wandering into a secret, private place. Maybe future generations will feel differently.
July 22, 2007 — 8:28 am
Greg Swann says:
In Time Enough For Love, Heinlein has one of the characters point out that you can’t sleep when you’re driving a car, but your horse knows the way home. When I take time to read out in the world, I read my Treo. The iPhone is even more practical for that purpose, and it has tabbed browsing.
July 22, 2007 — 9:00 am