Future books now.

Aka, flipping is the new reading. I’d seen a few examples of ways in which the book experience might become a more interactive one, but watching this from Ideo, it’s a rewiring. Book of Eli purists will scoff at where things like this are headed, clutching their leather-bound editions of whatever classic they love, but it’s very much like the evolution of how music was and is distributed (from vinyl to streaming), and how that experience has broadened beyond an end user simply listening and sharing it with friends. The musician in many cases has now ceded control to a fan community community that includes interacting, remixing and reinterpreting the actual music itself.

 You see that with mass media like TV and newspapers: The way they brought you the content may have changed, (From print to online editions), but control over what you could do with the end product didn’t. That's the front line in the content war going on now with established publications and iReporters, or a music industry which doesn’t want to innovate, so it legislates. Not that print in the physical sense will die off—magazines say it ain’t so—but you can see this new exploration of the reading experience becoming SOP for a wired world.

Hopefully books don’t go the way of vinyl, which is now this niche thing that a few labels release on because it’s a cool way to promote bands. But good luck getting kids to give up flipping an iPad story when it’s time for bed.

Damn books. See what they started?

(Via Nerdcore.)