It’s no secret I like the idea of e-books and I like libraries. I’d like to see them come together, and it probably isn’t as far off as one might think. California has already considered making all their public school textbooks digital, so after public education, libraries seem the next logical step.

Recently I read about a new type of encryption scheme using cloud computing to allow data to expire. Since I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about e-books lately, and one of the most annoying things about e-books is that they can’t be easily shared, at least without piracy.

This lack of sharing isn’t a huge problem for consumers who buy their books, but for people like me, who get most of their books from the public library, e-books probably won’t be on my horizon for quite awhile. This is sad, and steps should be taken to change this. Data destruction may be one of the ways to do it.

The new data destruction technology, called Vanish, is based on cloud computing, which means it’s for data stored online. This is fine for things like Gmail, or Google’s other document-based apps, but could something like this be adapted to e-books and e-readers, even though most e-books are stored offline on a device or computer? I’d like to think so, but currently, public libraries aren’t set up very well to handle e-books, let alone through an online interface. Still, the idea could be adapted for use online, and should be. Here’s why:

E-books (and other digital data) are a strange problem for publishers, since once the production and marketing costs are complete for an e-book (or e-music, or whatever) are paid, an unlimited number of copies can be made with virtually no cost at all. This is why content consumers, especially my generation (I’m 26) and younger, take an issue with paying the same price for digital content as for physical (media-based) content. I see no reason why I should have to pay 10 bucks for an e-book, when I can buy a physical one for ten bucks. My digital copy doesn’t cost the company anything (after production costs), so why should I have to pay full price?

I bring up that issue in a discussion about e-books, data destruction, and public libraries, because free copy prices on e-books could be a great boon for public libraries, especially libraries serving neighborhoods that already struggle to pay costs, stay open, and maintain a good level of quality.

The real question for bringing e-books to libraries is about what how the books are licensed. When a library orders 10 copies of Harry Potter and the Thousand Page Time Waster, or Twilight: Teen Pillow Talk with Sexy Vampires, publishers know that only ten people from that library can be using the book at a time. The library sets a reasonable check-out period (say, about two weeks), and that means that even if each copy leaves the library the instant it comes in, and there are no over dues, 260 people can read that book from that library every year. That probably doesn’t cut into the publishers profits that much, since they still sold 10 copies of the book, and since those 260 people are library users (read: poor people, anti-materialists, school kids, and tech writers with girlfriends who won’t let them buy any more books until they buy more shelves), and probably are only worth about 10 copies between them anyway.

However, e-books from a library present a different problem, depending on the licensing model used:

Limited copies per library, or

Infinite copies per library.

If e-books are handled by a library the way physical copies are, then only 10 people can have an e-book “checked out” at any one time. I assume this would be handled through some type of online interface. This limited checkout makes the library’s relationship with publishers pretty much the same as it is now, or at least, very similar. However, to use a system like this, although it satisfies the restraints of the current system, is pretty damn stupid. Digital books are not limited by the economy of scarcity, so if the library gets tons of demand, why shouldn’t 100 people be able to check the book out at once?

To overcome this stupidity means that the library needs to be able to deliver infinite copies to reasonably satisfy both their user-base and the logical advantages of using e-books in the first place. However, a library that was able to “check-out” an unlimited number of e-books would soon destroy the publishing industry (god forbid the middleman goes down!), once an easy way to read them is found, especially if the check-outs could happen online.

There has to be some happy medium, at least for now, in order to be e-books into libraries faster, and I think that digital data destruction might be it. If e-books checked out from libraries were limited to a set amount of time before they erased themselves (or became unreadable), then the library model for e-books becomes a little more palatable to publishers. Libraries can still give out unlimited copies of e-books, but the books become unreadable after two weeks, effectively asking the user to renew the book or stop reading it.

Of course, to prevent readers from just constantly renewing a never-ending collection of e-books, a limit on how many checked out books must be imposed. If the user wants to check-out a new e-book, s/he must allow one of the other (5? 10? 15?) e-books to expire. Libraries could also use a system that only allows a reader to check out a book once and never renew, but that’s just stupid – some people read much slower than others and could need multiple renewals to get through a particularly verbose tome. Account quantity limits are a better idea than item-based limits.

What do you think? What do you think are the problems to be overcome before e-books come to public libraries? How would you overcome them?

-m.

I’ve had an idea for a long time: develop a video game conversation engine for Role Playing Games (in the style of Mass Effect or the Elder Scrolls series) that gave Non Player Characters (NPCs) a method to develop their conversational content on the fly, based on a knowledge database, syntax and keywords.

I spent a decent amount of time trying to figure out the ins and outs of the idea, to offer a conversation engine design that would be easy to implement and provide players with a more immersive experience. Now, I’m not a programmer, though I have some very limited programming background. I see myself as a writer and an idea man – that is, I like to come up with stories, design ideas, and write content. However, my thirst for a more immersive way to relate to NPCs in Role Playing Games drove me to commit my ideas for a dynamic conversation engine to [digital] paper.

Below is the outline for my idea, as posted on scribd.com. It’s not a full-featured design document by any means, but it gives enough detail to grasp the basic concept. I’d hoped to use the idea to secure a position at a game company, in hopes of working on the project. Working as a writer or designer for a game company is my dream and I’m trying to slowly build my online presence and develop games with my brother, who makes Flash games.

However, without demonstrating the conversation system in action, this below document alone probably isn’t enough to get a game design or writing job. Therefore, I’m putting it out there in hopes that someone will try to implement it and put it in a game, or send me feedback about it.

If you decide to use it, or are developing something similar, I would love to hear about it, as a comment here, on scribd, or via email. My email address can be found in the “about” page linked above. Enjoy.

Dynamic Conversation Engine Concept

So, I’ve been watching a lot of Star Trek lately, specifically Deep Space 9. I don’t know why, but I’ve been powering through the seasons at a decent rate – 2 or 3 episodes a night. I’ve been enjoying it – I love that Star Trek always makes me excited to experience technology that doesn’t exist yet. I don’t mean the far out stuff like warp drives and transporters, but the little stuff that doesn’t seem that far off.

It was watching so much Star Trek that got me interested in the Apple tablet, something I already talked about extensively in a previous post. Characters in Star Trek carry around data pads that are strangely close to what I want out of a tablet.

In the Star Trek future, everyone uses their tablets to read. Books, manifests, technical manuals, whatever, but the fact is: the characters are reading, rather than viewing multimedia content. I know that it’s fiction, but it still surprises me that the show’s writers chose to portray people in the future as readers of plain text. In reality, I doubt plain text will be the outcome of the e-book movement.

It’s not that people don’t read. They do. However, the place for one-way, plain text is dying. The Kindle and other e-reader’s might be doing okay right now, but if other companies come out with something more multimedia friendly in the same form factor, a multimedia device that supports e-books, I’m willing to bet Kindle sales will slow quite a bit.

Physical print is dying, there’s no mistake about that. Newspapers are closing all over the country because they can’t sell enough ads or copies to stay in business, because everything is moving online. And once things move online, they become graphical, pretty, interactive, editable, and comment-able. People have come to expect this, and that’s why a multimedia tablet in an e-reader form factor would do better than the Kindle or the new Barnes and Noble device, because it would support music, movies, and books with interactive features.

It’s about the technology. Right now, companies are focused on taking print books and moving them to an electronic device. But that isn’t enough. Physical books still have many advantages over e-books – they’re light, easy to read, the battery never dies, they are shareable, don’t have DRM, and are free from the public library. Those features are hard to beat, and trying to move books onto a device without offering people advantages over top of what the current technology (books) supports isn’t enough.

All Amazon and Barnes and Noble have done is make books available on a device, with the only enhanced feature being immediate delivery. One good feature and a new list of drawbacks (battery life, DRM, the dangers of owning a 300 dollar device I plan to take to the beach) isn’t enough. The medium demands a new type of content. E-books should be more than print books read on a screen.

E-books need more interactivity. I want to be able to read a book then be instantly able to participate in a discussion about the book, right from my device. I want forums devoted to the book, or the ability to tag comments in the book and share them with my friends. I want to buy (or borrow, preferably) a book and see the comments my friends made about it via a social networking interface built into the device. If my buddy reads a copy of Jim Butcher’s Storm Front and thinks page 57 is awesome enough to comment about it, I want to be able to access his comments right from the reading interface, and be able to respond.

I want to be able to read a classic like Shelley’s Frankenstein and see the annotations by famous literary scholars, if I choose to follow them, almost like the tagging system photo websites use. I want to be able to read a new novel right after it comes out and share my thoughts about that novel with my friends who are reading it too.

I want interactivity built into the book and I want to do it all from the device I’m reading on. The current e-readers don’t come close to that. The e-ink technology, while impressively imitating the experience of reading a print book, can’t support that level of interactivity. The refresh rates just aren’t up to par. A multimedia touch-screen tablet with the choice to optimize the display settings for reading text is probably a better option, unless e-ink vastly improves and can handle more interactivity.

New technology is built on creating a two-way street, and the companies building e-readers need to take advantage of that. Instead, they are focused on making e-reader devices as close to reading a print book as possible, which is the wrong way to go. They need to approach authors about writing for an e-audience. They need to focus on enhancing the reading experience on a device, not just recreating it. Because they won’t win that battle.

Getting people to embrace a new technology is all about the “killer app” concept – the new feature that necessitates a move from the old tech to the new. Social networking, annotation, interactivity built into the text of the book: all these things might not be the “killer app” that makes people switch to e-books on a device, but they are a start.

Interactivity in a book is something humanity has never done very well before – hand written notes in the margins, footnotes that take up the whole page, or separate handouts from professors, none handle interactivity as well as a simple web hyperlink. So if books are moving into the digital, it’s time to update the way this interactivity is handled. Imagine the possibilities for education alone: professors could join a group with their students and comment on aspects of the book they want to draw students’ attention to. Teachers could use book forums to discuss works with their students.

And imagine the possibilities for authors: fast feedback, right from the fans. Right now the music industry is changing, going online, and indie artists are better for it. It’s easier for them to reach their fanbase, connect with them, interact with them, and hear what fans want. I’m sure some authors wouldn’t embrace this type of interaction, but I imagine many would.

Overall, it’s no secret that e-books will eventually win. Instant publishing, over-the-air delivery, and the environmental advantages are all benefits people want to see. But without interactivity and the focus on a more graphical interface, a way of enhancing books with new features, the “killer app” aspects just aren’t there yet. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Sony need to get with the program. Until they do, people probably won’t migrate to e-books or e-readers en masse.

Keep on keepin’ on,

-m.