‘You know nothing of my work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong.’
I’m getting mad (with Marshall McLuhan)
Five good reasons why publishers should care about geolocation 5
The third in a series of posts on geolocation. For an introduction to the subject see the first post:
Reason 1: Because of the opportunity
Reason 2: Because of the threat
Reason 3: Because it fulfills the ancient prophecy
Reason 4: Because it brings back the social dimension of reading
But now we draw things to a close with…
Reason 5: Because the web will die
The Web, according to Wired magazine, is dying, perhaps already dead (The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet): ‘Two decades after its birth, the World Wide Web is in decline, as simpler, sleeker services — think apps — are less about the searching and more about the getting’. If, like Stephen Bourne in the second of these posts, you are contemplating a future in which up to three-quarters of your business is in the process of migrating online, then rumours that your soon-to-be primary delivery platform, the open web, is about to go down the toilet, ought to ring a few alarm bells. Too many publishers seem to want to create an online analogue for the library or bookshop. Perhaps it’s time we stopped thinking about sites altogether and started thinking ‘services’. iTunes would be a better role model for publishers in this regard, perhaps; because while there is an iTunes site, iTunes itself could not be remotely be described as a site. Continue readingFive good reasons why publishers should care about geolocation 4
The third in a series of posts on geolocation. For an introduction to the subject see the first post:
Reason 1: Because of the opportunity
Reason 2: Because of the threat
Reason 3: Because it fulfills the ancient prophecy
And now we explore…
Reason 4: Because it brings back the social dimension of reading
‘When you move a book into a dynamic electronic medium,’ says publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin, ‘the social aspects of reading and writing come more to the fore’. The truth is that reading and writing have always had a social dimension – but actually I’d rather put it another way. Because it’s all too easy with digital content to make the mistake of thinking of ‘community’ as something you add to an e-book platform or learning programme, as a sort of bolt-on. Books speak of other books, as Umberto Eco said so memorably. However, this speaking requires human agency. What’s unhelpful about Eco’s image is that it gets things the wrong way round (deliberately, and for the purposes of irony, but too many people take it literally): it’s the humans who do the talking, and the books are the means they use to carry out that essentially social interaction. Continue readingFive good reasons why publishers should care about geolocation 3
The third in a series of posts on geolocation. For an introduction to the subject see the first post:
Reason 1: Because of the opportunity
Reason 2: Because of the threat
We now move on to…
Reason 3: Because it fulfills the ancient prophecy
The emergence of geolocation as a significant factor in information delivery can be seen as adding further force to the ‘content in context’ mantra that has been prevalent in online publishing circles for so long. Information analyst David Worlock, among others, has long held up the embedding of information in workflow as the holy grail of online publishing, and location-aware applications, even in their current, nascent state, must serve as significant way-markers on that quest. Continue readingFive good reasons why publishers should care about geolocation 2
The second in a series of posts on geolocation. For an introduction to the subject see the first post:
Reason 1: Because of the opportunity
But for now we move on to…