The ebook is made possible by the current dominant form of user interface, namely the touch screen. Already, we have seen this format give rise to the app revolution, and to text chat taking over from voice chat. Last year, for the first time, South African mobile operators made more money from data than from voice.
Now there is a new interface emerging and, ironically, it is built around voice. It goes by the name Siri, or Alexa, or Bixby, or Cortana, or Google Voice Assistant. Along with gesture control, which we already use very effectively in the traffic, it is expected to evolve from mere assistance with search and instruction to becoming a de facto interface.
Gadgets will disappear from your hands and move up to your wrist band, into your ears, onto your spectacles, and under your collar. Your voice will be the control, your ear pod will be the receiver and transmitter, and your hands before your eyes will provide direction and fine tuning.
This gives the book – or rather reading – two clear directions. Firstly, it will appear as projected text on any surface. In fact, you don’t even need a surface. If you use augmented reality, the text will be displayed for you, in mid air, and only for you. Reading glasses will become glasses that project what one reads, rather than magnifies something on a page.
Secondly, it will be read to you, via your ear pods. This could be in the form of Text-to-Speech, via the software already on most handsets, or in the form of audio books. The choice is one of content versus performance.
This reading experience of the future can be a rich one, with earpods providing audio, augmented reality providing visuals, and other reading accessories providing force feedback, the way gaming accessories do today.
It is even possible that reading becomes a social activity again, with multiple people sharing in the same reading experience at the same time, some expressing their reactions via text, others telling them to shut up and stop interrupting the story.
The strongest likelihood is that reading becomes more immersive, the way listening to music has become thanks to ever cheaper headphones delivering ever improving sound via ever improving apps.
Books may follow the music streaming subscription model, where you no longer own music but have access to every song ever recorded. You will never own a book, but be able to read every book ever published.
So the future of the book is not so much about the future of a format, but about the way people consume any given format. It’s not about physical versus electronic, but about which senses are engaged. Superficial text reading may give way to immersive text experience.
This will make reading an even more antisocial activity than ever before. But the experience of reading will no longer be limited to the ability to acquire a book, or to following a sequence of textual impressions.
St Augustine will be horrified. But it may well be reading heaven.
- Arthur Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter on @art2gee and on YouTube
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