Technology is changing rapidly. New ways of viewing media are developing. The barriers between being a content producer and a publisher of content are tumbling. I don’t have to explain this to anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock, but devices like the Apple iPad are ushering in new platforms. On demand publishers like MagCloud and Lulu are removing the upfront costs of print production. What’s to stop me from publishing my own content as an app? or a magazine? As far as I can tell, the only thing that’s stopping me is me.
The advance will come in being able to create both a print and electronic version that both take advantage of each mediums different capabilities. While the screen can be beautiful, it doesn’t have the same luxuriousness that ink on paper does. However, the screen can provide a dynamic experience that paper is locked out of. Does this mean I need to start shooting video to mix with my photos? I’m getting the distinct feeling that this might be the case.
Right now I’m going to explore the on-demand print world and see how that feels. Once I get a grasp on what that requires I hope to move to a more dynamic user experience with the interactive magazine. I hope to learn from the multitude of folks who are taking part in these experiments such as the Wonder Factory who put together this mock-up of Sports Illustrated.
I know many photographers are drooling over these possibilities and I’m looking forward to the day when publishers take advantage of what is possible. Current ebook readers mimic paper, but as we can see above, there is no need for this to be the case. I can imagine textbooks adding interactive features to illustrate the story. I can imagine authors mixing text with video and sound and motion to create new stories. Imagining that last scenario brings up the idea that this multimedia interactive story telling is already all around us. How many video games are just long stories where you get to be the main character? Will our books of the future be more like video games?
