I have written a rough draft for my program information section. My section includes tools used, a road map, and general info.  Finalizing the draft and working on CSS is up next for me.

My part in the DTC handbook includes web development as well as writing and research. My research and writing will include program information. This entails topics such as programs used in the DTC program (Sublime, Adobe stuff, Slack, etc…), the road map of the program, as well as just general info.

I have not listened to a podcast so I listened to an episode of “This American Life”. The specific episode that I listened to was called “Family Dig”. The effective theme of this particular podcast is storytelling. The hosts are able to bring in different people, and have them tell stories. A narrator and music add the entertainment value and also help keep the audience engaged while the episode goes on. The people behind the podcast are also great at organizing the story in a way that is interesting and makes you want more. 

The podcast as a form of information and entertainment is top-tier. With how many people are on the go in the current era, it provides a way to be entertained or informed while you’re on the go. It’s easy enough to have a pair of earbuds or even just listen to it in your car during your commute. A lot of popular podcasts are also available “free” through services that many people already have. The first that comes to mind is Spotify. If you pay for a Spotify subscription you have access to tons of podcasts. Podcasts also allow people to multitask, which is what a large number of listeners do. You don’t need to be visually engaged with the medium so that allows the listener to drive, clean, or do homework while still engaging with the content.

https://dtc-wsuv.org/rdoherty21/DTC%20338/

The book has hardly changed in the thousands of years of its existence. Is that due to technology limits of the time, or was it nearly perfected in the years following its creation? Just as the printing press revolutionized the book and reading, how will digital affect the legacy of the book? This is a question that will be attempted to be answered in this blog post. This post will look into where the book is going, and some fun ideas for the book in the future. 

Borsuk writes, “Headings, glosses, and titles might be written in red, as would dots and dashes used to separate sections and sentences” (17) Borsuk is talking about how Greek and Roman scribes would organize their manuscripts. If you look at any modern text book, the same thing still happens today. Chapters and sections are usually highlighted in a brighter color than the regular text which helps keep things organized and easy to find. The chapters and sections are also commonly separated by some kind of border that lets you know that these ideas are related to one another. This quote makes it hard to imagine that books will change much in the future. The very essence of what a book is has not changed much at all since it was created all those years ago. 

The idea behind reading does not make a whole lot of sense, words and symbols are used to convey messages about stuff that happens in real life. That’s why in the future augmented reality will play a large part in how readers consume books. Borsuk says, “For example, in Quanzhou, there is a mountain whose cliffs are inscribed with maritime stories, such as historical accounts of Zheng He’s travels to the western ocean.” (35) In the future when we’re all wearing augmented reality glasses, I could see stories on landmarks or buildings of note. Say you’re in Seattle and you’re wearing your glasses and an icon pops up on the Space Needle. A story comes up and displays itself next to the actual landmark and tells you about the history of it and how it came to be. This idea could translate into reading anywhere that has a solid color, such as a wall or table. Borsuk writes, “Artists’ books showcase several historical forms that turn the book into a recombinant structure, allowing readers to create new juxtapositions within it.” (168) You could be in line at the DMV waiting to get a new license and you could just stare at a cream colored wall and enjoy reading your book through your glasses. This may seem like you would get some weird looks, but in the future people will be used to this and no one will even bat an eye at you. Augmented reality can also change how we interact with print books. As you read through the augmented glasses, they can conjure up certain scenes off to the side of the book. Maybe you’re reading a book from A Song of Ice and Fire and a dragon flies around the book while you read about it. The glasses can also track your eyes and get data from them. The glasses will be able to tell which word you stopped on and after a second of your eyes hovering over a word, they’ll generate the definition of that word without even asking. External links will also be implemented in case you want to buy or learn something more about the book you’re reading.

Artificial intelligence is another thing that will play a large part in books in the future. You’ll be able to set your own voice as the narration for the book you’re reading. I would personally never do this because I despise the sound of my own voice, but this is a neat feature that could have many different benefits. A prime use of this would be to preserve a loved one’s voice. Having a grandparents voice narrate a story for their grandchild would be a touching use of this technology, or using the voice of a long lost loved one. This could also save publishing companies by not having to pay a voice actor to narrate the story. Celebrities could make money by offering their voices as a download for users to buy. Imagine spending $19.99 on a Snoop Dogg voice download so you could listen to Pride and Prejudice with him. Artificial intelligence doesn’t stop at voices though. It could also generate images based on the story that you are reading. These could either pop up on your e-reader device, or could display through your augmented reality glasses. Artificial intelligence will also be able to create new stories based on your own experience. Say you’re riding the bus into town and go across the river. A story could be automatically generated about a bus riding protagonist who fights with a Godzilla type creature to keep the world safe. This ability would turn any boring task into an interesting event. Virtual reality gets a lot of the hype nowadays, but I personally think that augmented reality may be the bigger technology in the future. 

An unfortunate drawback of digital books in the future will be the addition of ads. Take a look at YouTube and how long it can take to watch a video. Some videos can have ads that take over 5 minutes to sit through. Amazon sells Kindles at discounted prices if you’re okay with it being loaded with ads. With how absurd ads are becoming in digital media, they’ll soon make their way into digital books. If you take your eyes off of the screen for more than 10 seconds, an ad will pop up and won’t go away until you’ve stared at it for 5 seconds. Ad’s will also be planted at the end of chapters because most people will stop their reading at that point. Travel companies will have external links to the destination of the book you’re reading. While you are reading a book about someone traveling Europe, every new location will have a link to flights and hotels around that area. You’ll even get a discount because you have auto pay and you can book the flight and hotel with just a touch of the screen. 

I think authors will still be in the same situation that they are in now. If you have a big following, or are a big name, you’ll have lucrative contracts that can make you some big bucks. What changes the most is the ease of self publication. While the big publishing companies will be making tons of money as always, more and more people will be able to publish their first book thanks to how easy it will be in the future. We’re basically at a point now where you can write a story and basically get it printed with the touch of a button. Being able to print on demand will only be more advanced in the future. Maybe in the future printers will be so advanced that they can create a physical book from a digital one you own with just a click of a button. 

Despite all of this digital talk, I truly believe that physical books will stand the test of time. Humans love tactile things. They feel good in our hands as well as looking good on our shelves. The example that I would use for this are records. A technology that was invented over one hundred years and you can still get records for a lot of new music. A physical item is a talking point, it’s something that you can display. It’s hard to imagine going over to someone’s house and inquiring about their digital book library. Another drawback to digital books is that you may not actually own them, you just have the rights to read them, while unless you got the physical book from a library, you own it. Analog books also have the benefit of not needing another technology in order to use it. It doesn’t need a cell phone, a Kindle, a laptop, or even electricity in order to be accessed.

Multimedia, hyperlinks, interactivity, and sharing are absolutely a huge part in how we use texts today. Hayles says, “But with the shift, serious incompatibilities arise between the expectations of educators, who are trained in deep attention and saturated with assumptions about its inherent superiority, and the preferred cognitive mode of young people, who squirm in the procrustean beds outfitted for them by their elders.” In the past curriculum was taught as though you were only going to be fixated on one piece of information at a time. In current times, that’s just not how the world works. It would be interesting to see the statistics now on how many students do their homework without listening to music or watching YouTube/Twitch. I think that these things are for sure distractions, however the book will always be there for people who want to read.

I’ve noticed my attention span is lower, especially for digital reading. I have access to anything I want no matter what time of day it is. I do love to read physical books, but that feels like a completely different thing than reading them on the web or mobile devices. 

The DTC book is mostly what I want to see in a digital textbook. It has just the right amount of information that is subsidized with interesting hands-on videos and activities. The book also has a great table of contents that lets you easily find anything you want.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide is a tale of two people. Dr. Jekyll is the protagonist who spends his life hiding his deep and dark urges. In order to suppress them he creates a serum. The longer he uses the serum, the less effective it becomes. He began to transform involuntarily into Mr. Hyde and killed some people. Dr. Jekyll then started to run low on the chemicals that he used to make the serum. After he realized that he wouldn’t be able to stay as Dr. Jekyll anymore, he locked himself in his basement and poisoned himself.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43

The CALL of CTHULHU

The CALL of CTHULHU is the story of people on the trail of a monster. We follow people as they encounter clues as to the whereabouts of a mysterious entity. We encounter a devious cult that performs sacrifices in order to summon something. The narrator then heads to Australia where one of his crew members accidentally opens a portal and releases Cthulhu onto the world. 

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/68283

The post-artifact system is a system that is still trying to figure itself out, it is ever evolving. In my opinion it’s hard to keep up with. A new technology is seemingly released monthly that can revolutionize the book and digital publishing. We’re also in a phase where every ecosystem has its own file type that can’t be used in other ecosystems. Is this going to be like CD’s and DVD’s beating out their competition, or will the users have to constantly check if what they’re buying will work with what they’ve got?

It’s hard to truly understand the importance that the web has provided when you’ve always had access to it. I remember growing up, most houses I would visit would have a collection of encyclopedias. It was one of the only reliable ways to get information quickly. You could also go to the library, but that’s time consuming. It takes little effort to find the same information nowadays. We’re spoiled beyond belief when it comes to readily available information. An example is when you are assigned a research paper. Not only does this university have access to a large physical and digital library, it also has access to tons of other libraries as well. This creates a network where I rarely need to enter a library in order to find effective sources for my research.

“Amazon offers us the same “book” in paperback or Kindle edition, at slightly different prices, with the digital edition often costing as much as the print now that publishers can control their own ebook process.” 

This is a large reason why I stopped purchasing books on my Kindle and went back to physical ones. Ebooks don’t need to be stored anywhere, they don’t need to be shipped, they don’t even need to be handled by anyone. It stands to reason that they should be cheaper than physical books, but they aren’t. Another reason I don’t purchase digital books is that I don’t actually own them. A lot of the content that people consume daily is stuff they can lose access to at any time. Personally I use Spotify, Steam, and Netflix daily. All of these are just digital libraries that I pay to have access to. We’re even seeing features in cars that can only be accessed if you pay a subscription. I think that with the revival of things such as records and physical books, people are realizing that having a tactile object is important. That’s why I think that physical books will continue to grow in sales and popularity in the future.

My favorite book may be an oddity to some, but as someone who enjoys cooking and is also inquisitive, this book by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt fulfills both of those requirements. Kenji has made a career by teaching cooking science. This cookbook might just have more food experiments than actual recipes. The point of this book is not to just list out recipes, but to inform you as to why you do the things you do when cooking. That’s what intrigues me the most with this book. I love knowing how and why things work. He answers questions such as: Why does a potato take longer to bake than to boil? Why is pasta cooked in a large volume of water? These questions are the ones that I love learning the answers to.

As good as the design of this book is, the content is what hooked me in. Kenji blends recipes, personal stories, and food experiments extremely well in this book. It makes the book easy to read and keeps you guessing as to what’s around the corner. I should also mention that I discovered Kenji on YouTube where he does POV videos of recipes where he goes in depth and shows you every part of making the recipe. My favorite part about his book and YouTube channel is how he never cuts out his failures. 

Hello! I’m looking forward to finding out more about digital publishing!