[bob stein visits the ioct]

Today we had a wonderful treat, Bob Stein, from the Future of the Book in New York, came over to talk about "Reading and Writing In The Networked Area." Bob was incredibly easy to listen to with an eloquence that is not often apparent in talks that I've been to. Here are just a few words used that made me sit up straighter:

coterie
locus
artifact


When I wasn't mulling over Bob's eloquence I managed to jot down a few points:

• books are the one medium where user/reader is in control - random access, reader chooses when to turn the pages, how long to spend on each page, whether to flip to back or middle...



• producer-driven media will turn into consumer-driven media



• suddenly this richer media (multi-media cds were the example) is under our control which encourages deep reflection



• the advantage of making physical books electronic include adding source documents, original text alongside the author's comments on the making/writing of the work which Bob says makes for a much richer reading experience



• books are authoritative "frozen" objects



• books are vehicles for moving ideas around time and space to "enable, encourage, engender conversation"



• blogs are opportunities to "think out loud" where the author can gather a "coterie" or readers/co-conspiritors



• it took 70 years to figure out page numbers so of course we're still figuring out new media/electronic works

*update* on the train to London Kate Pullinger and Bob Stein illustrate their techy tendencies:

*Update 2* Bruce has written an interesting post on Bob Stein's talk at the PaRT blog.

*Update 3* Chris Joseph writes about Stein's multimedia authoring platform - Sophie.