The Sacrifice of Going From Scroll to Codex to Screen

But so far the great e-book debate has barely touched on the most important feature that the codex introduced: the nonlinear reading that so impressed St. Augustine. If the fable of the scroll and codex has a moral, this is it. We usually associate digital technology with nonlinearity, the forking paths that Web surfers beat through the Internet’s underbrush as they click from link to link. But e-books and nonlinearity don’t turn out to be very compatible. Trying to jump from place to place in a long document like a novel is painfully awkward on an e-reader, like trying to play the piano with numb fingers. You either creep through the book incrementally, page by page, or leap wildly from point to point and search term to search term. It’s no wonder that the rise of e-reading has revived two words for classical-era reading technologies: scroll and tablet. That’s the kind of reading you do in an e-book.

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God knows, there was great literature before there was the codex, and should it pass away, there will be great literature after it. But if we stop reading on paper, we should keep in mind what we’re sacrificing: that nonlinear experience, which is unique to the codex. You don’t get it from any other medium — not movies, or TV, or music or video games. The codex won out over the scroll because it did what good technologies are supposed to do: It gave readers a power they never had before, power over the flow of their own reading experience. And until I hear God personally say to me, “Boot up and read,” I won’t be giving it up.

via Lev Grossman at nytimes.com

On the future of Apple

The last test of genius is its longevity. But in thinking about what comes next, it's remarkable to note how young Apple's new celebrity is. The iPod is only ten years old. A child born on the day the iPhone debuted in 2007 wouldn't yet be in kindergarten. A child born on the day the iPad debuted in 2010 might not be walking.

Still, great companies occasionally flat-line. Microsoft had the largest market cap in history in 2000 and its stock hasn't increased over the last ten years. GE's has declined. But Jobs leaves his company surprisingly well positioned. Even as the first or second most valuable company in the world, Apple's price-earnings ratio is normal to low. Its products are too superior, its potential in overseas market too big, and the global mobile tech space too fecund for Apple to face imminent decline.

Predicting what comes next is prophecy. Suffice it to say that having reinvented the personal computer, music business, phone, and personal computer (again), Steve Jobs has demonstrated and re-demonstrated his genius for us. In return, we wish him well.

via Steve Jobs: The Edison of Our Time and the Future of Apple by Derek Thompsom, theatlantic.com

Well done is better than well sued

"A definition is the enclosing of a wilderness of ideas within a wall of words." Samuel Butler

In last weekend's The New York Times the paper featured an Opinion article by Neal Gabler titled The Elusive Big Idea. In the article Gabler explores the very definition of ideas and thinking. What is an idea? What are they for? And, do we care?

If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it’s not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don’t care as much about ideas as they did. In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can’t instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding. Bold ideas are almost passé.

It is not so much that bold ideas are passé as it is that bold ideas tend to be very costly.

Patent lawsuits are rampant at the moment, everyone suing everyone else, from Lodsys suing independent developers (and Apple trying to defend them), to Google, Apple, Microsoft, HTC, Samsung, and others all suing each other in various incestuous permutations fighting to put up the the walls that will determine what "mobile" means.

And it's not just technology. Lawyers, with their walls of words, are doing a great job to make anyone pursuing creative thought feel like the simple act of thinking is always pending litigation.

Ultimately there are two kinds of ideas: those that live in the ether of concepts and angels and dreams and those that are made known through action.

The boldest idea is the one that is actually implemented. Anyone can have a thought, anyone can try to define it, contain it, claim it, sue for it, but few, those that dare develop it, build it, are the true thinkers.

Bold ideas may be passé, but bold, differentiating action is not, and never will be.

Most importantly, if you can make something happen from an idea once, you can do it again.

With apologies to Benjamin Franklin, well done is better than well sued.

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Google's Astro Teller on Innovation at Singularity University

Astro Teller, Google's Director of New Projects, speaks to Singularity University's student teams on creating a culture of innovation, and how "common sense" is often at odds with creating this culture.