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Dog-eared Digital Books
"If I die tomorrow, well, at least my children, who are approaching as we speak, at least they will have a very good idea of what I was like, of what my mind was like, because they will be able to read my books. So maybe there is an immortalizing principle at work even if it's just for your children. Even if they've forgotten you physically, they could never say that they didn't know what their father was like." - Martin Amis [1]
I recently attended the Books in Browsers (BiB) conference [2] at which I heard Bob Stein make the point that there is meaningful and emotional value in annotating written content [3]. While Martin Amis is referring to the act of writing a novel, we could all share experience, in text, across time. If I carefully annotated my thoughts (likes, associations and criticisms) on The Life of Pi [4], with contextual information (an autumnal commute, in a Mancunian bus, aged 24), my children could perform the same act, with the same text, at the same point in their lifetime. This experience could be extremely poignant.
While it occurs with physical books (more frequently in academic genres, perhaps), annotation could be promoted and enhanced through digital reading devices and services. A paper based manuscript is limited by the rate it degrades and its physical size, a digital equivalent (as long at its content can be deciphered) can last, and be expanded, indefinitely. Annotating is not a new concept for the web (and therefore formats like ePub), projects like the Open Annotations Standard [5] have been attempting to solve this problem, with limited success, for some time. One key constraint being the transient nature of the source.
Other BiB talks touched on these subjects. Blaine Cook and Maureen Evans talked about authors being able to use the tools familiar to software developers (source control systems like Git [6]) and social-networkers to aid communal content creation and blur the line between writer and reader (Maureen nurtured a crowd sourced cookery book based on these principals [7]).
Content creation, in this style, might not be appeal to every reader, but note making could. James Bridle's talk covered some of the key features that bookmarks and annotations should provide [8], an appealing idea he described was:
"Traditional books, physical paper books, are fantastic. You can read them cover to cover, bookmark them, dog-ear them, write notes in the margin, underline your favourite passages, treasure them, keep them, and lend them to your friends. Ebooks should let you do these things too - but sometimes they don't." - James Bridle [9]
Taking into account all of the above, there is a strong argument for implementing this kind of functionality within eReading tools. In the Open Books Checklist [8] (item three) includes the following: "You should be able to save these marks separate from the book itself." The Open Annotation proposals share the same ideas. There's another way to look at this.
Borrowing further from software development practices, open source in particular, readers could purchase a "release" of the book. From that point on the book is theirs (their own "version"). Annotations and bookmarks can be added directly to them (in a format that can be hidden/revealed) this version can then be passed on, and on, gaining a life of its own, each reader leaving their mark (as developers leave their comments/foot-prints on a code base). The digital equivalent of browning, dog-eared, written on pages.
As with software, the user's version may deviate from further "releases" made by the original author. These could be merged or ignored at the reader's discretion, this way the supplements can't be separated from their source material (physically or over time). Example usage might include: a teacher annotating a text, then providing this version to their students, who further branch the content. The teacher could choose to merge the best student content back into their version, and when a new text is released choose whether to merge or continue with the version they have with their next class.
My copy of the Life of Pi, becomes our family copy. Each of us leaving impressions, a new edition is irrelevant, ours is the version that means the most.
[1] http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1156/the-art-of-fiction-no-151-marti...
[3] http://www.slideshare.net/synch101/bi-b-bob-stein
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_Pi
[5] http://www.openannotation.org/
[8] http://www.openbookmarks.org/checklist/
[9] http://booktwo.org/notebook/everything-is-the-same-only-different/
"The more people do, the more society develops, the more problems arise."
The title of this post is an excerpt (from an excerpt) of a quote by Masanobu Fukuoka (posted by Tom Hodgkinson on The Idler blog). Masanobu Fukuoka was a soil scientist who turned his back on the perceived wisdom of modern agricultural practices to develop a technique of "natural farming" that more closely mimics nature.
This approach appeals to me. As a developer it is a core skill to innovate and find solutions to problems. Often these are solutions built on top of other solutions. By taking a step back and viewing the developments from a broader perspective the solution may be to cut away "innovations" rather than adding to them.
Running Shoe Technology Goes Full Circle
I have recently become the owner of a pair of Vibram FiveFingers shoes. These are basically a thin covering for the soles of my feet allowing me to walk and run "barefoot" (the actual soles of my feet are far too soft to be practical).
I came across FiveFingers in the comments for this article about how the invention of cushioned shoes has changed the way humans walk and run. Sports shoes have lead to many humans walking and running in a fashion that differs from the way the foot evolved to be used. As a result many runners (tired of injuries associated with landing on the heel of the foot) are using "barefoot" training methods to keep their bodies healthy.
Here's a rough illustration of how barefoot running has come back around:
- Humans evolved to walk on their hind legs, their feet acting a a shock absorber along with the ankles an knees
- Shoes similar to huarache sandals arrive allowing the wearer to withstand uncomfortable surfaces
- Fashion and innovation combine leading the majority of the developed world to wear shoes with some sort of heal
- Around 1972 modern athletic shoes are invented, coinciding with the growth of sports sciences
- Today more people than ever suffer from sport and posture related injuries which need corrective orthopedic treatments. Shoes like the MBT are invented to "correct" the foot and allow us to walk "naturally"
It seems that many of the claims that are made for the benefits of orthopedic insoles and MBT shoes are mirrored by simply wearing no shoes at all.
How about software and programming?
One example of the over-engineering that goes on in software development industry might be: templateing engines creeping into PHP.
PHP started life as a way to customise static web pages (e.g. adding today's date or simple hit counters), it then evolved into a way to manage page layouts and behaviour, effectively an interactive templating language. Further evolution has lead to PHP becoming a full blown Object Oriented Language, and with this development have come various frameworks that improve code reuse and working practices.
Then came an innovation that (in my eyes) went too far, templating languages were introduced to make them manageability of page layout and data representation easier. This meant more code to interpret them and therefore further load on the system running it.
One of PHP's core appeals is its ability to mesh directly with HTML, a language truly intertwined with the web; templating seemed an unnecessary step away from that.
For some applications abstraction layers may be a step too far especially when it is an abstraction based on an abstraction.
In a broader sense this could apply to software in the form of feature creep.
I'm not saying that innovation is a bad thing, far from it. But, it may make sense to look at the whole process and in some cases whittle it back down to provide the best solution.
To conclude the rambling
It is a paradox. If you define the success of a species by ability to bend the environment around to their will, then humans most productive trait is the desire to innovate.
However, innovation upon innovation can lead to imperfections and further problems (which in turn will need further solutions).
A valuable skill, to those who's vocation it is to innovate (software developers especially), may be to recognise when a problem can be solved by removing a layer of complication rather than adding yet another "solution".
