On reading and design: more thoughts

I have just been reading a short editorial piece by Patrick Tucker in The Futurist: The 21st Century Writer. It is a reflective piece on Tim O’Reilly’s “Tools of Change” conference, and focusses on publishing in an electronic age. Unsurprisingly.

For the serials publisher and the journalist, there is the thought that with half the world reporting and editorialising in blogs:

We’ve entered an era where the acts of thinking, writing, and to a certain extent publishing are indistinguishable, and where charging money for editorial content is becoming an ever trickier proposition.

I liked particularly the first part of this, suggesting that the act of "thinking out loud" has migrated to the Internet in the form of blogs. Especially, as in that very idea, is captured the reason why traditionally sponsored journalism should endure - it is (or should be) so much more than thinking out loud, as I am doing here, and it is distinguishable from my ramblings by its pedigree and publishing house.

For the book publisher, there is a reprise of my previous posts (one & two) on the subject:

the mission is to make an industry built on a fifteenth-century technology viable in the twenty-first century. That means reinventing the concept of the book for the digital age. There's (sic) is perhaps the biggest challenge.

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