Social MarginaliaHow authors & readers give books immortalityKevin Lim @brainopera

The Future of Reading in a Digital World

Clive Thompson

Books are the last bastion of the old business model—the only major medium that still hasn't embraced the digital age.

Publishers and author advocates have generally refused to put books online for fear the content will be Napsterized.

We need to stop thinking about the future of publishing and think instead about the future of reading. 

Every other form of media that's gone digital has been transformed by its audience. 

The only reason the same thing doesn't happen to books is that they're locked into ink on paper.

Second-hand copy of Ulysses, James Joyce

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cobra/5465955/

The Glosas Emilianenses are glosses added to this Latin codex that are now considered the first phrases written in the Castilian language. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalia

Illuminated manuscript painting by Sargis Ptisak, who was a 14th century Armenian artist. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalia

Marginalia are notes, scribbles, and comments made by readers in the margin of a book, as well as marginal decoration, drolleries, and drawings in medieval illuminated manuscripts, although many of these were planned parts of the book.

In the Margins: Reflections on Scribbles, Knowledge Organization, and Access  June Abbas

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brokenthoughts/561629475/

Uses for Annotations of Print

thinkremember clarifyshare

Institute for the Future of the Bookhttp://www.futureofthebook.org

GAM3R 7H30RY is a networked book. Source: http://www.futureofthebook.org/gamertheory/

CommentPress  &  Digress.it  Both are plugins for WordPress that let you comment by paragraph in the margins of a text.

Thoughts?  Who owns the work?  Does dialogue with readers improve content? How could the interface be more intuitive?  Could we have an open standard for networked marginalia across mobile devices?