The book is not going away but it will change

The days just after Christmas are a traditional reading time around our house. Most of us get one or more books in our stocking and it's nice to curl up and read.

This year, the e-book is the talk of the town and there are lots of predictions that the book as we know it is doomed. I don't buy it. It's way too efficient and pleasurable to ever go away. But there's no denying that the dollars and sense of the publishing business are dictating changes to come.

So it was a pleasure to find this article at FastCompany.com about what the book might become:

The first movie cameras were used to film theater productions. It took early cinematic geniuses like Sergei Eisenstein, Fritz Lang, Charlie Chaplin and Abel Gance to untether the camera from what was and transform it into what it would become: a new art form. I believe that this dynamic will soon be replayed, except it will star the book in the role of the theater production, with authors acting more like directors and production companies than straight wordsmiths. Like early filmmakers, some of us will seek new ways to express ourselves through multimedia. Instead of stagnant words on a page we will layer video throughout the text, add photos, hyperlink material, engage social networks of readers who will add their own videos, photos, and wikified information so that these multimedia books become living, breathing, works of art. They will exist on the Web and be ported over to any and all mobil devices that can handle multimedia, laptops, netbooks, and beyond. (Hey, Apple, are you listening?)

Sounds good, doesn't it?

While I still plan to be curling up with pages and ink, I am looking forward to what's to come. I've got an iPhone and I love it. And I can see the possibilities for that platform. And with all the buzz about the new tablets, etc. that are on the way, the future for readers looks very, very good.

Happy reading.