{"id":153,"date":"2009-06-14T18:53:12","date_gmt":"2009-06-14T18:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp\/?p=153"},"modified":"2009-06-14T18:53:12","modified_gmt":"2009-06-14T18:53:12","slug":"written_in_pixels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/2009\/06\/written_in_pixels\/","title":{"rendered":"Written in Pixels"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"read2point0.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/read2point0.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"margin: 0pt auto 20px; text-align: center; display: block;\" height=\"230\" width=\"450\" \/><\/span>A few weeks ago, I passed a girl sitting in the window of an NYC coffee shop. She didn&#8217;t notice me staring at her because she was glued to the text on her very stylish Kindle. I had glimpsed the future, and admittedly it left me feeling old and a bit nauseous at this sign of <i>progress<\/i>. Just trying to use the web browser on my husband&#8217;s small-buttoned Blackberry makes me want to toss it out the car window. Books have been my safe haven from all this technology; the sweet smell of paper and ink my comforting escape from the demands of that ever-blinking cursor.<\/p>\n<p>A few days later my mom asked me if I&#8217;d heard of these Kindle things. She thought I might like one for Christmas. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We need to stop thinking about the future of publishing and think instead about the future of reading,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/techbiz\/people\/magazine\/17-06\/st_thompson\">writes  Clive Thompson in <i>Wired<\/i><\/a>. &#8220;Every other form of media that&#8217;s gone digital has been transformed by its audience. Whenever a newspaper story or TV clip or blog post or white paper goes online, readers and viewers begin commenting about it on blogs, snipping their favorite sections, passing them along. The only reason the same thing doesn&#8217;t happen to books is that they&#8217;re locked into ink on paper. Release them, and you release the crowd.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So what do you think? Will your reading experience be improved if you can Facebook your favorite passages? Gchat your way through the complex points of the philosophy you&#8217;re studying? Find that sentence you know you read 30 or so pages back with a simple keyword search?<\/p>\n<p><i><b>UPDATE:<\/b><\/i> When we all own Kindles, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/06\/15\/business\/media\/15kindle.html\">what happens at book signings<\/a>? <\/p>\n<p><center><script type=\"text\/javascript\" language=\"javascript\" charset=\"utf-8\" src=\"http:\/\/static.polldaddy.com\/p\/1706696.js\"><\/script><noscript><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/answers.polldaddy.com\/poll\/1706696\/\">When I think of the digital future of reading, I think:<\/a><span style=\"font-size:9px;\">(<a href=\"http:\/\/answers.polldaddy.com\">trends<\/a>)<\/span><br \/>\n<\/noscript><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago, I passed a girl sitting in the window of an NYC coffee shop. She didn&#8217;t notice me staring at her because she was glued to the text on her very stylish Kindle. I had glimpsed the future, and admittedly it left me feeling old and a bit nauseous at this sign [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-153","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}