[iDC] Media dies more slowly than some would like

[Rick Prelinger]

This has been very interesting.  Thanks to all for the thoughts.

I guess I'd mod my original remarks as well and speculate that though the ecosystem encompassing both ebooks and pbooks is very new, I don't think pbooks have stopped evolving.  I think the (sometimes vague) desires they address are going to be with us for a long time to come, and that it would be short-sighted to say that they're senescent.

We await the development of digital discovery tools and applications with excited anticipation.  In fact we've thought of simply posting pictures of our physical shelves and linking images of book spines to the digitized versions, and that's just a starting point.  All I'd say is that we really need to build unpredictability into discovery.  Far too many "new media" projects, including most of the ones in which I've been involved, hide the links, connections and surprises under the hood.  Everything is preordained, or the universe of possibilities is small enough that you cannot really get lost.  This isn't real discovery.

In addition, when one deploys the database as a tool for discovery, the act of formulating a coherent query often serves to limit the unpredictability of what it might return.  Riding the wildcard may help ensure that we continue to find surprising answers to our queries.  Gaming might be another way to think about 
building randomness and serendipity into digital collections.

The engineering sensibility, which so often seeks to breed out the unusual and enable replicable results, has a very hard time with the idea that people might want to find what they weren't looking for.  It would be great to see digital maps without gas stations, motels, FedEx dropoff points, taquerias and dog groomers.

Rick
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Rick Prelinger
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