Come iPad cambierà il vostro modo di leggere

Paul Carr ragiona sugli effetti che iPad porterà sul nostro modo di relazionarci con la lettura.

I suspect – will seem like great news to publishers, who are increasingly frustrated by Amazon's control over the ebook market. Having made a mental and financial commitment to their iPads, readers are unlikely to retreat back to their Kindles when their eyes start to hurt trying to read hundreds of pages on Apple's device. Instead they'll return briefly to physical books to scratch their long-form itch. They're still portable, affordable and readable – and carrying one with you doesn't feel like wasted space in a way that carrying a Kindle and an iPad would. Physical book sales will rise, Kindle sales will drop.

Soon though, especially as more and more commuter friendly apps appear on the iPad and publishers push out more video content to further distract us from the need to read for prolonged periods, the idea of carrying a book will go back to seeming unnecessary.

And at that point the iPad will indeed have killed the Kindle. But, for millions of casual readers, it will also have killed something far more valuable: the experience of reading for pleasure.

Cody Brown allarga il discorso lanciando sul piatto la possibilità che i libri si trasformino in applicazioni, estendendo l'esperienza stessa di "leggere" un libro.

It's not a problem that the experience of reading a book 'cover to cover' on an iPad isn't that great as long as there are better ways to communicate on the device. On the iPad there are. What's challenging for authors at this point is the iPad enables so many different types of expression that it’s literally overwhelming. Once you start thinking of your book as an app you run into all kinds of bizarre questions. Like, do I need to have all of my book accessible at any given time? Why not make it like a game so that in order to get to the next 'chapter' you need to pass a test? Does the content of the book even need to be created entirely by me? Can I leave some parts of it open to edit by those who buy it and read it? Do I need to charge $9.99, or can I charge $99.99? Start thinking about how each and everyone one of the iPad’s features can be a tool for an author to more lucidly express whatever it is they want to express and you'll see that reading isn't 'dead', it's just getting more sophisticated.

There are literary techniques, there will be iPad techniques.