Book Maps

Electrophoretic Display by Phillips

In a recent conversation with Gary I believe, I mentioned the idea that books, that robust and traditional staple of our culture would probably change completely in their transition to Cyberspace.

So far, the attempts to replicate the "user experience" has failed miserably, and for good reason; you cannot shnuckle in bed or go to the loo with your computer and comfortably read a novel without it literally costing you an eye or two and probably constipation.

Nor should you be forced to flip pages in virtual books. And when electronic paper, like the electrophoretic information displays by E-Ink becomes commercially available you won't need to carry a thick bundle of it since basically one page, the size of your choice will suffice to display whatever content from the universal library you might want to access.

I would like to think, like many people do, that books will never go away. But the fact is that books are only good if you read them. And given the different environment in which new generations are born and trained, it is unlikely that bookstores will survive as we know them. Amazon is one example of a "bookstore" that is rapidly becoming a general store and even a social space since that seems to be the fuel that drives the emergent morphing Internet.

So, what can digital technology, the basis of New Media offer that books cannot? Interactivity is a given, but what kind of information would extend the book experience in a novel and useful way? Here are a couple of ideas, not necessarily novel, since nowadays nothing is, but they are based on concepts that have been made possible only with the introduction of the digital information infrastructure.


On of them is the concept of Book Maps that establishes correlations, branches and multiple ways to enjoy, understand or analyze a subject we are reading. The serendipitous element that allows us to encounter that which we don't know we are looking for is often mentioned in defense of libraries and "brick&mortar" bookstores. But precisely this aspect is what would be exponentially enhanced by "mapping" all the relationships and possible connections that the text in question might have, from semantic to poetic interpretations. Any filter or focus could be possible as well as the random aspect that we seem to enjoy so much in our physical searches.

Visual Thesaurus

An example of this approach as applied to language is the Visual Thesaurus
which uses a technology called ThinkMap. Try it on if you haven't and play around with filters such as free association mode or relationships etc. (in settings)

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Other intriguing tools by Amber Frid-Jimenez of MIT are Cognitive Machines and Semantic Landscapes. Although at first sight they might seem incomprehensible to someone used to a card system, or even to an online search, I can see how the cybernauts among us would get an instant visual feedback on the "terrain" they are exploring.

Semantic Landscape