09 March 2010

Fortune Mag: "The Future of Reading" (aka: my treadmill accessory of sorts)

This tender, green, old-media sprout began to bloom in a curious way, however. Each month Clem was excited when Vogue arrived. She'd rip into the issue and scamper up the stairs to her chambre à coucher, with enough enthusiasm to do Anna Wintour proud. But after digesting each issue, Clem would reappear with it hours later -- only now a zillion Post-its jutted from its pages, stegosaurus-like. 
Over time, one by one, those stegosauri began to stack up, spines out, in her closet. One day I decided to take a peek at the dinosaur graveyard to see what my daughter was tagging so furiously. It turned out that she was trying to annotate each issue, sorting the material by outfits, accessories, footwear, and other categories for later reference. I noticed that the more issues she tagged, the more frustrated she became. This was a lot of work. So why was she doing it? 
"Don't you get it?" my wife observed. "She's trying to turn the magazine into a computer." 
Et voilà! Of course she was."
-Josh Quittner "The Future of Reading" Fortune Mag, Vol. 161 #3

This magazine has been resting on my bedside, unread, for an unforgivably long period of time. I dusted off the cover and schlepped it to the gym this morning entertaining hopes that it might make the treadmill a bit more bearable. While the dreadmill may have dashed my hopes, the article was worth the once over. It's a great article that provides an outline of how the physical act of reading is transforming before our very eyes. After the outline you'll find interviews (in the print version) conducted by Beth Kowitt. Interviewees include: Kurt Anderson, Katharine Weymouth, Jimmy Wales, Steven Brill, and Marc Andreessen

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