Jeff Bezos on why he hopes he doesn't have to read on paper anymore in his life....
NEWSWEEK: DO you think that the ink-on-paper book will eventually go away?
BEZOS: I do. I don't know how long it will take. You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author's world. That's not going to go away; that's going to thrive. But the physical book really has had a 500-year run. It's probably the most successful technology ever. It's hard to come up with things that have had a longer run. If Gutenberg were alive today, he would recognize the physical book and know how to operate it immediately. Given how much change there has been everywhere else, what's remarkable is how stable the book has been for so long. But no technology, not even one as elegant as the book, lasts forever.
Do you still read books on paper?
Not if I can help it.
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Is there a next phase where the novel gets reinvented and the new digital medium gives rise to new art forms?
I'm skeptical that the novel will be "re-invented." If you start thinking about a medical textbook or something, then, yes, I think that's ripe for reinvention. You can imagine animations of a beating heart. But I think the novel will thrive in its current form. That doesn't mean that there won't be new narrative inventions as well. There very well may be. In fact, there probably will be. But I don't think they'll displace the novel.
BEZOS: I do. I don't know how long it will take. You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author's world. That's not going to go away; that's going to thrive. But the physical book really has had a 500-year run. It's probably the most successful technology ever. It's hard to come up with things that have had a longer run. If Gutenberg were alive today, he would recognize the physical book and know how to operate it immediately. Given how much change there has been everywhere else, what's remarkable is how stable the book has been for so long. But no technology, not even one as elegant as the book, lasts forever.
Do you still read books on paper?
Not if I can help it.
===============
Is there a next phase where the novel gets reinvented and the new digital medium gives rise to new art forms?
I'm skeptical that the novel will be "re-invented." If you start thinking about a medical textbook or something, then, yes, I think that's ripe for reinvention. You can imagine animations of a beating heart. But I think the novel will thrive in its current form. That doesn't mean that there won't be new narrative inventions as well. There very well may be. In fact, there probably will be. But I don't think they'll displace the novel.
posted by dan at 10:41 PM
1 Comments:
Keep posting stuff like this i really like it
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