May 19What are different book formats good at?Part 2, of the Series: “What is a ‘book’ in the age of the web?” This is part 2 of a 5-part series: “What is a “book” in the age of the web?.” In Part 1, I introduced the series, with the question: “Do (digital) textbooks matter now? Will (digital)…Publishing12 min read
Dec 15, 2021What is a “book” in the age of the web? (Part 1 of 5)Background: “Can the ‘book’ remain relevant?” Ever since I started thinking about the implications of the web on the world of books and publishing, when I started LibriVox.org (free public domain audiobooks recorded by volunteers) in 2005, I have been asked in many different ways: “Can the ‘book’ remain relevant?” That is: can (should?) books retain…Books9 min read
Jun 16, 2021The Question Concerning Education Technology2020–21: What a year During this year of the pandemic, teachers, and students have faced challenges and threats few of us ever imagined. I’ve had conversations about this with dozens of people in the Pressbooks ecosystem — faculty, librarians, administrators, students — all grappling with a transformed universe, one mediated more than ever before…Education Technology8 min read
Mar 20, 2020Why #socialdistancing is life or death (Quebec version)(I haven’t written anything here in a long while, I guess the apocalypse is as good a time as any to get back at it.) Taking social distancing very seriously helps reduce the spread of COVID. The impacts are huge. The “natural” growth of COVID before major social distancing measures…Covid 192 min read
Apr 21, 2016What books can learn from the Web / What the Web can learn from booksThis is the text of a talk I gave at the WWW2016 conference, on a panel with Tzviya Siegman (of Wiley & co-chair of the W3C’s Digital Publishing Interest Group), and Ivan Herman (W3C staff member on the DPIG). Tzviya talked about Scholarly Publishing in a Connected World, and Ivan…Books11 min read
Feb 3, 2016Can Open Textbooks Help Save the Open Web?[Note: This is a heavily revised text of a talk I gave at the Open Education Summit in Vancouver in November, 2016 (correction: 2015)] Kurt Vonnegut made some graphs of four archetypal stories: “Man in a hole,” “Boy meets girl,” “Kafka,” and “Cinderella.” The graphs chart the protagonist’s fortune, good…Open Source25 min read
Apr 22, 2015Why can’t we read anymore?Or, can books save us from what digital does to our brains? — Last year, I read four books. The reasons for that low number are, I guess, the same as your reasons for reading fewer books than you think you should have read last year: I’ve been finding it harder and harder to concentrate on words, sentences, paragraphs. Let alone chapters. Chapters…Books11 min read
