Funny you should say that, because it normally takes me five slow readings to digest the full import of your writings. And I enjoy that slow roast process as much as the actual chewing.

I’m looking forward to more of your posts soon.

Thanks a million.

Obi

However, as a general response, it is important to remember that the social media revolution is about the liberation of content from a prescribed means of distribution and the associated creation of new “distribution independent” types of content and means of information sharing. It is not about the end of publishing – although the end of some types of publishing will inevitably be one of the consequences. Content is not going to fly to the digital space indiscriminately – content will find the means of distribution to which it is best adapted.

It just so happens that “book content” – or at least long-form narrative content is still better adapted to the old publishing model than it is to the available digital options.

It is also not really about the costs of production – and therefore the need for mass distribution (which is what publishing is) to defray these costs. The problems which the publishing model sought to solve (especially in scholarly work and heavy writing) can easily now be solved through new forms of social connection.

Will continue to think about your points!

As always it is a great pleasure dining on your profound prognoses.

I’ve followed your commentary in this area since your November 2008 article, ‘Gutenberg and the social media revolution: an investigation of the world where it costs nothing to distribute information’( http://bit.ly/93lohF ) hence my interest in tapping your views on the FT article.

I am trying to square your herald of the demise of the Gutenberg Principle and trend towards costless publishing with the continued ‘stranglehold’ of the big publishing houses over the ‘book’ industry for the foreseeable future. Did we call the revolution a day too early? Or does this apply only to blogs and social media but not to books, scholarly work and heavy writing which still require these publishers to defray the costs of production, even if distribution can be costlessly done over the internet.

I wonder if in another post you could shed some light on the prestige payoff many writers also get from being published by a big house as against just pushing out their content on say UnknownQuantity.Wordpress.com , their personal blog . Is this a hurdle to that shift to costless publishing as well? What role does validation play in the continuing relevance of the Gutenberg Principle?

Your observation on our cultural fetish with print for books (long-form) but surprising indifference or even inconvenience to that publishing format for news is a bit counter-grain.

At what word-limit does one draw the line between preference for digesting text in the digital form against the printed form?

Or is the nature of that line not based so much on the number of characters and on the quality of the content? Are there other behavioural factors that impinge on this choice of consumption.

For example, we read newspapers typically just once – in a single day – but want to read a book, have to read a book over several days, and maybe share it with friends 9enduring product).

In a sense, does our preference for the printed format really come down to a fetish for artifacts?

The problem with this, from my view, would be that such artefact-retentiveness ought to have held for music CDs. We all know people who up to the early 2000s enjoyed displaying their CD and vinyl record collections in their living rooms or talking about 40-CD changers in their cars.

Then how come in the space of a few years, these same collectors now regard those CDs as junk, in a non-derisory sense?

Based on this experience, can we know in advance what users of past technologies would do with a new disruptive technology?

Say, even with all we know now, was it necessarily going to be that music-lovers would have enthusiastically welcomed the ipod? Apart from the convenience it offered and the sleek design, there were a myriad of issues Apple faced in convincing music publishers to sign on to the new medium. I am not sure that it was fated to happen that a product would change the way we buy music in such a revolutionary fashion in the space of a few short years. There were several other factors that could have hastened or declined its progress. But that is a moot point.

The point you make on user experience as a major factor in the potential success or failure of the shift to e-readers is a very good one and thought provoking too.

So, I think that the printed format reached its peak centuries ago. It cannot evolve further. It is paper and ink. However, arranged, it is just that. Light coloured paper cut in rectangular shape, dark text arranged in columns.

But the final form of e-readers has not been achieved. I think that that evolutionary process will be going on for years to come in the design of consumption devices.

I think that we can expect a lot more progress in their design and the ease with which they help us consume previously printed content. I feel that there will be a greater and greater gap between the tedium of extended reading on a laptop/PC screen and on the screen of these targeted devices.

I am not sure that anything is settled yet. It can still swing either way. Betamax was a better technology but it lost out to VHS. Maybe it’s still early days.

I admit that there are so many question and quite a lot of rambling in this comment. It is one that I am passionate about. I hope you will excuse me on that score.

I do hope you will be observing this space closely and updating your readership with your thoughts.

I am eagerly looking forward to that.

Thanks.

Obi Tabansi Onyeaso