Ah thats quite a funny video.
If you could clarify what you meant via the scrolls and handles
analogy, I would be appreciative.
Thanks,
Greg Sonnenfeld
On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 11:33 PM, Bruce Sherwood
bruce.sherw...@gmail.com wrote:
Clearly, this is very much a moving target.
After
Nothing profound. Just that here we are talking about possible
improvements in the usability of ebooks, and in the spirit of that
hilarious video I was imagining the early adopters of scrolls griping
about how they were harder to use than clay tablets, and what if we
changed the design of the
I suspect it's a rather hopeless venture, at least for technical books.
I just spent a couple of days with my editors at Addison-Wesley. Since I have
about 250 adoptions of my textbook in the US, both I and AW are very interested
in all these issues and have been following the various attempts
I'll mention that the smart physics textbook editor at Wiley, whom we
work with, a few years ago gave a very analytical talk at a physics
education conference on why textbooks MUST move to electronic form. He
gave a convincing summary of how the current scheme is dysfunctional
for everyone --
Bruce,
Very nice! For these and several other reasons, electronic formats might just
save the textbook. They also offers the possibility to undercut the used book
market - which 1) drives the continuous worthless revisions, 2) makes it very
difficult for publishers to take a risk on a textbook
As much as I like the idea of a 3D electronic book, I don't believe it will
make an huge impact; maybe when electronic media get to the point where writing
notes and going back and forth are really as easy as with a physical book.
One of the pressures we face as textbook authors is that unless
In college, I had a tablet I would use often for note taking and
homework assignments, The few e-books I had greatly simplified the
homework process, as i could cut and paste homework problems and
diagrams from the book into my homework and mark them up.
I look forward to the day where e-text
Clearly, this is very much a moving target.
After scrolls were first introduced, was there a lot of innovation
getting the handles just right?
There is an absolutely wonderful video on how to use something called
a book in a medieval monastery, produced by Norwegian TV:
