Books, Technology and the Future

Three comments:

(1.)  In the early 1990s, Tom Clancy and I shared the same New York literary agent. Clancy was on a roll, having published a string of international best-sellers. He was being called the father of the “techno-thriller,” a new genre that combined accurate information – about military tactics and weapons – with a fictional adventure stories.

So I was surprised when my agent told me that Clancy was putting writing aside for a few months to concentrate of developing a video game.

Huh?

Why I wondered, would someone who was at the top of the writing game and was earning millions of dollars worldwide bother to waste time creating a computer game?

A few months ago, my son, Kyle, revealed to me what a genius Clancy was. I came home from work and found Kyle in the basement in front of the television wearing a headset, chatting with other team members.  He had been up all night playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

For other prehistoric parents out there, Call of Duty made history when it was released in 2009 by earning $310 million in the first 24 hours that it was on sale. Its release eclipsed both the biggest movie at the time, 2008’s The Dark Knight, which had a $158 million opening weekend, and the final Harry Potter book’s launch, which brought in around $200 million.

In today’s whiz bang, techo world, there are scores of young men who are not interested in reading but are spending hours playing games. Clancy was well ahead of the curve. I don’t know of another author who had the insight to turn his skill as a writer into becoming a game-maker too.

Which makes me wonder: “What’s next?”

(2.) Remember typewriters, 33 rpm records, cassette tapes? They are antiques now and the next relic apparently is going to be that paper book you are reading. Patti bought me a Kindle for Christmas two years ago and while I thanked her profusely, which is what you do when you are in a second marriage and you get something that you really don’t want, I didn’t figure I would ever use it.  I was wrong, which is also something that happens quite often in our marriage.

I love my Kindle, especially when I am traveling. I don’t have to lug hardbacks through airport security and when I finish a book, I call up Amazon and bingo, have a new book to read within minutes. The electronic versions are cheaper too!

Several days ago, Barnes and Noble CEO Steve Riggio called 2010 a “watershed year” for the country’s largest bookseller and announced that B & N will begin transitioning from a bricks-and-mortar retailer into an e-commerce retailer, according to Publishers Weekly.

Why? Because sales in book stores continue to be stagnant, but electronic book sales nationally have soared 176 percent in 2009.

As the price of Kindle-like products begin to drop, the number of persons downloading books will continue to increase and that is going to result in fewer and fewer hardback and paperback sales.

(3.) In a Wall Street Journal column this week, L. Gordon Crovitz noted that the large textbook publisher, Macmillan, is selling new software to college instructors that will enable them to rewrite textbooks by deleting paragraphs or editing them down to individual sentences. This is being called “mashup” – a term that was hatched when people began altering music and videos to create their own.

Crovitz asked if this is a good thing. On the plus side, it will allow a professor to keep materials current. Think Wikipedia. But should individuals be allowed to “improve” the works of great writers? Aren’t we losing something here?

I used to chuckle at my father because the digital clock on VCR that I bought him was constantly flashing. He didn’t know how to reset it. Now, I only have a fifty-fifty chance of getting a DVD to play in our massive multi-media center if one of my children isn’t around to flip the right switches. When it comes to using TIVO – forget it.

Thank God that Patti is a techo-expert or I’d be sitting next to my dad watching all of those blinking lights.