Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Sufficiently Advanced Technology

Remember in the Harry Potter movies how all the pictures in photographs and newspapers would move and wave at you? Or in any sci-fi setting where they had datapads of the latest newspapers and magazines? One of the visual design decisions made for Star Wars was that there shouldn't be any paper to reinforce the futuristic feel (A Long Time Ago). Thats what I first thought of when I heard about the iPad. This article by jawbone (tweeted to me by BBH Labs) about Augmented Books seems to be coming at it in a different direction though one no less interesting. Using a simple setup (which helps with immersion/presence) they add some digital animations to picture books to enhance whats on the written page. Its only a matter of time before some innovating (and enterprising) author releases a book intended solely for e-readers that has these sorts of animations fully embedded and integrated into the narrative. Faris recently had an entry where he mentioned that a young child looked at her father's Kindle and called it Daddy's Book. All this conjures up images of a parent reading a bed time story to their child, nestled together around the glow of a touch screen as a Hungry Little Caterpillar munches on various foodstuffs across the screen.


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