Social Reading

Clive Thompson is a bit behind the times:

Nick Bilton, Roll-Up Computers and Their Kin

Clive Thompson, a science and technology writer and columnist for Wired magazine, said that if “publishers are smart — and readers lucky” the content of the e-books of the future will be more open and collaborative.

“You’ll be able to cut, paste and exchange your favorite passages, using them in the same promiscuous way we now use online text and video to argue, think, or express how we’re feeling,” Mr. Thompson said.

In other words, e-books will become social experiences, with sharing among readers and even the ability to see the most popular passages as other readers highlight and comment in real time. “E-books will display their social and informational life,” Mr. Thompson said. “On which pages do readers most linger? What are the world’s best comments for this passage?”

The ‘popular highlights’ feature of Kindle has been out for some time, where Amazon aggregates highlights from other readers, to let you know which passages are more popular. So Thompson is presaging something that is here already.

The most obvious social affordance of books — sharing them with others — is lost with the current restrictions on ebooks (as Verlyn Klinkenborg noted recently). I guess I gave up on sharing albums with friends long ago, and so that dimension of music listening has been long gone. But I still feel more secure in a room lined with books. Perhaps in another 10 years all my books will have been donated to the library, and I will be reading — and sharing — online, as Thompson suggests.