Richard Schwier

We've had a great discussion about how we use ebooks, about how we make them, and what they may mean to us looking forward. Well, let's have a little fun imagining what e-books might become.  Let's really go out on a limb with this idea and create a wish list of what we wish an e-book might do.

For example, I would really love it if e-books could start taking advantage of augmented reality in the future. You probably already know about augmented reality -- the mashup of real-world and computer generated material to build some kind of composite treatment.  

In the tradition of "show don't tell", here is a google page of images of different augmented reality applications. This stuff really  makes my head spin.  I have all of these Hogwarts-inspired fantasies about three dimensional characters rising out of a page and talking to me. I can  imagine choosing different combinations of chemicals and mixing them together and experiencing the reaction in real time.  I could see a collection of hockey cards, where if you lay them out on a table, the players knock a puck back and forth. I fantasize about holding the page of a recipe, and being guided through my supermarket to buy the ingredients. I would love to see Mark Twain sitting atop my page, complete with rocking chair and pipe, and talking to me about writing Huckleberry Finn.

What about you?  What would you love to see an ebook do?

Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAugmented_GeoTravel.jpg

By GreySmallHorse (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Thanks, Peter. I'm going after it right now!

Rick

These sound fascinating, Edward.  Are they available anywhere we can reach them easily?  Would you be willing to share them with us here?

It's never too late, Alice.  We sorted out a few plans that Sylvia will post later, but consider this an invitation to join us in pulling together an e-publication of some sort that gathers the ideas from this seminar, and then extends the ideas.  We're thinking of a big, everyone-in-the-pool kind of collaboration.

Oooohhhhhh, I think we all need this!  I think you're onto something really good here, Sylvia, and it would have application well beyond SCoPE.