Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
Why does the future of the ebook NEED to evolve at all? Why can't it just remain as it is: an electronic representation of an author's written words?
NOTE: I'm not talking about new features, or the various bells and whistles that are introduced by the hardware/software used to render those ebooks. Evolution there is expected.
But the ebook itself (I've long ago stopped differentiating between electronic books and printed books--they're both just "books" to me) will probably remain "just a book" (though rendered electronically) for the foreseeable future. If not beyond.
Let interactive, multimedia-rich presentations inhabit their own new realm. There's plenty of space for the "Not a Book" you're describing to carve out its own niche. They don't need to be called something they're not.
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I agree whole heartedly. Certainly, the files created by Microsoft "Sway" pretty much feel like a new medium to me.
The inclusion of text, still photos, videos, the internet, and other digitized intellectual property into a "Sway" file, simply doesn't
feel like an eBook. Though these are not internet graphics files, they can be posted to the internet and shared in other conventional ways. These things walk multiple lines somewhere between a slide show, videos, text, a web page, and an Adobe Flash file.
Although "Sway" can produce interesting and compelling multimedia displays, it is still pretty primitive in the sense that people are still playing around with it and are unsure how to use it, when, and who the audience should be. It is clearly not what it, and its inevitable competitors, will eventually become.