2. Technology will never be the obstacle.

Wow. The new Lytro camera. It allows the user to chose after-the-fact what part of the picture they want the focus fixed on.

And I was certain that image focus would always be a challenge.

But one of the laws I’ve learned is that just when you think it can’t be done, you find out that not only can it be done but it’s probably been working (at least in the labs) for most of the last decade. Technology doesn’t just advance these days. It races. (more…)

I’ve tried to distill my 30 years of publishing technology into some guidelines, modestly named The Laws of the Future of Publishing. I’ve got 31 of them so far.

People have asked that I fill in some detail beyond the terse statements. That’s going to keep me busy for awhile. Here’s the first. (more…)

I was reading the bio of the David Lavin, the president & CEO of The Lavin Agency, a speakers bureau that represents some famous names, including the 400-Hour Workweek’s Timothy Ferriss, CNN’s Anderson Cooper and ”Literary Legend” Margaret Atwood.

In his bio Lavin catalogs some impressive achievements. He was the youngest chess master in Canada and represented the country in two World Under-27 chess Olympics. He had a very successful career as a promoter, bringing such luminaries to Toronto as Peter Ustinov, Tom Wolfe, Jerzy Kosinski, Noam Chomsky, Hunter S. Thompson and the legendary triple bill of Abbie Hoffman, Timothy Leary, and Eldridge Cleaver.

And he owns 3,500 books.

What? Wait. Does that strike you as an odd claim? People have long boasted about their libraries. But I tried to translate it into the ebook era and it doesn’t parse.

Lavin actually writes that his 3rd-person self “has an ever-growing personal library of over 3,500 books.” Try adding “on his Kindle” or “on his iPad” to the phrase and say it slowly. It doesn’t sound right to me.

19 books on an iPad

Or as I’ve seen trumpeted elsewhere, Lavin could update the claim to having 3,500 books on “three Kindles (including the DX), two iPads (both versions), his iPhone and his Android smartphone” — emphasize the hardware, not the software. But that would sound boastful.

If Kevin Kelly is correct about the future of books — they will be “accessed” not owned — then how will we categorize our love affair with the printed word…oops…the…word?

May 1, 2011

Another view of the library of the future from Jeff Koterba at the Omaha World Herald.

’nuff said.

The New York Times is positively bursting with fun and fascinating reading for publishing technologists. There’s a nifty little tablet comparison feature, which will allow you to create your own comparison chart like this one:

Your chart will be larger, and might just compare the two tablets you’re lusting after the most. Keep in mind that if your lust is still iPad-directed the rumor of the week is that the next version will be announced in January, rather than next April, so buying one for yourself for Christmas may lead to a New Years’ hangover. And then again, next week’s rumor could change that.

[12:18 pm: On ZDNet today:

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to pretend that tablets aren’t hurting PC sales....

In a statement, Gartner said:

Over the longer term, media tablets are expected to displace around 10 percent of PC units by 2014.]

David Pogue, the best all-around tech writer today, aslo celebrates ten years of writing about technology for the Times (and many more years elsewhere).

Pogue offers some choice insights “from the first decade in the new tech millennium.” Here’s a few:

1. The history of consumer tech is branching, not replacing…You want to know what the future holds? O.K., here you go: there will be both iPhones and Android phones. There will be both satellite radio and AM/FM. There will be both printed books and e-books. Things don’t replace things; they just add on.

2. Some people’s gadgets determine their self-esteem. (And they sure can get defensive!)

3. The same “breakthrough” ideas keep surfacing — and bombing, year after year. Some concepts’ time may never come.

And my personal favorite:

4. Nobody can keep up…if you’re feeling overwhelmed, you’re not alone.

I’ve been in the publishing business for over thirty-five years and in the tech side of the business for more than twenty-five. Publishing was relatively staid. Tech was always crazy.

I’m older now, but everyone I talk to who’s been on the circuit for more than a minute knows that the pace of technology change is still accelerating. If you want to understand the future of publishing bear this in mind. Technology is not a moment, it’s a process. And it’s a process that develops more rapidly than 99.9% of humans can absorb. Which should therefore slow things down. But it doesn’t.

If you can figure out why technology moves faster than people’s ability to absorb it you will be awarded a Bernoulli drive.