The death of the printed book, prologue
A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds. – Theodor Holm Nelson (Ted Nelson, philosopher-visionary)
It seems the era of computers made by people who do not like people is beginning to show signs of weakness. I will not even say it is ending, but this is certainly a hard blow to the old caricature of the computer world. That strange world of machines that crash and spit out bizarre messages with sound effects like horns and breaking glass, bizarre office metaphors like folders, files, trash can, desktop etc. Of course this is still somewhat far from over; imagine the day the folders disappear — the scandal.
I found something on the Internet that caught my attention: a 100-year-old lady who could no longer read books because of glaucoma went back to reading on an Apple iPad. We should stress the centenarian’s visible joy and enthusiasm — she quickly learned to use the iPad’s interface, and has since written two books and five limericks. A very hard blow to the fanatics who prefer the world of command lines and black screens with green letters (every nerd forum houses at least a hundred of them).
But this is no news to us and to the readers of this site, is it? Long ago we published here the infamous text The Last Printed Book, and here is a clear reason why this is bound to happen. The electronic world will overlay the paper world in a matter of time, and the book will certainly become something like the vinyl record of literature. But printed editions will grow scarce. Many will cease to exist at all. Perhaps only sure shots, best-seller writers. And one day we will laugh about all this (without quite understanding it).
Steve Jobs is no visionary, by the way. He is merely doing what falls to him at the right time; the truth is somebody else would have done it. Einstein acknowledged this fact, saying that the Theory of Relativity would have taken only five more minutes to appear had it not been him; it was in the air, it was necessary for the moment. A tremendous lesson in humility. But the truth is the iPad was first; soon there will be many others, and better, and nobody will care anymore which one was first. The near future has never been so interesting (never has the end of the world been so talked about).