There are some very stunning statistics out on the recent and escalating impact of the demand for digital content on the publishing industry.
Evan Williams (left) and Biz Stone, founders of Twitter, using the social networking service at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco, April 13, 2009. Credit: Peter DaSilva—The New York Times/Redux.
According to the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group, by 2010, ebooks represented 6.2% of the total unit market share with nearly 112 million units sold, compared to only nine million units sold in 2008. The dramatic growth in digital products is even more impressive when you look at the revenue figures, which grew from $1.88 billion in 2008 to $3.38 billion in 2010, which means that people are increasingly willing to pay for electronic content. Meanwhile, according to the same source, sales of printed books have been declining every year. In the education market, for example, there is steady and growing adoption of all digital formats, including digital databases, e-books, digital curriculum supplements, and mobile applications. This is coming at the expense of printed publications. In the K-12 segment, from 2008 to 2010, printed book revenue was down 13.7%, while revenue from digital formats was up 45%.
This trend represents a true paradigm shift in how we generate and consume information, and it means a significant change in the kinds of tools that we have available for learning and teaching.
As part of the TechWeek conference in Chicago this past summer, I was interviewed on the subject of digital content by Andrew Benedict-Nelson, who is director of content for Insight Labs, which is a kind of think tank. In rereading his questions—and to some degree my answers—I think they reveal a difficult challenge for us as we face a new frontier—a classroom where students and teachers must figure out what they need to know, and what needs to be taught, at a time when technology has split open the world for them like a watermelon with millions of seeds. Which seeds will bear fruit and how can they tell?
Andrew Benedict-Nelson: We’re doing this feature in conjunction with two events being sponsored by Manifest Digital during TechWeek, including the Chicago premiere of the film “Transcendent Man.” That film features a number of futurists, including Kevin Kelly, the founding executive editor of Wired. Kelly wrote a 2006 essay called “Scan This Book!” in which he foresaw the coming of a “Liquid Library.”
The idea of the Liquid Library is that one day we’ll reach a point where not only have all books been digitized, but that digital knowledge will be totally integrated with all the commentary and categorization that exists. And then that library would also be integrated with reality—the example he gives is that you could stand in Trafalgar Square and access everything that has ever been written about Trafalgar Square.
So given your experience in the publishing industry and your current work with Encyclopaedia Britannica, what’s your take on this concept?
Michael Ross: There’s a difference between what you can do and what ends up being usable and useful. I think what you just described is absolutely going to happen. But what ends up being useful is really not completely known. When you get a DVD, it often comes with an extra disc of features: the commentary, the behind-the-scenes stuff, all of the things they have captured because they can capture it. I have no idea who uses that second disc. I know I don’t. I want to watch the film.
When I look at what educators want in terms of the kinds of associations that can be done as a result of the digitization of content, it’s extremely specific to needs. When you look at the Britannica database, for example, you can search for anything on science—we’ve got thousands of media assets and articles that you can find by searching. But what we’ve found to be even more useful for our users is when we lay out the specific science topics that they need for, say, grade five or grade six, and create topical features that display subjects in full, through browses, curriculum correlations, and hyperlinks.
So there are many things we can do in terms of organizing data and linking data. But what is going to be increasingly valued is aligning digital content and assets to very specific needs and providing solutions. People have questions; we need to give them answers. I don’t know if everything written on Trafalgar Square is going to answer my needs or not. I might want to know specifically what happened there in the past ten years. A math teacher might want to know about the geometry of Trafalgar Square. The art history teacher might want to know more about its symbolism.
ABN: Let me push you on that. Part of the principle of the Liquid Library would be that all collections, annotations, and ways of organizing text are also available. So an advocate of the idea might say you could use it to do exactly what you are talking about, to access the way of organizing the data that is most useful to you.
“I SEE THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION BEING IN TOOLS THAT ALLOW PEOPLE TO ORGANIZE CONTENT IN A WAY THAT’S MEANINGFUL AND PRODUCTIVE FOR THEM.”
MR: We talk a lot about the difference between search and results. The role of a publisher in all of this is to do the work of finding things for teachers and for students, so they don’t have to do the search and research and putting things together, because that’s time-consuming. It’s one thing to have it available. It’s another to align it in a way that’s useful. That’s the challenge, and not necessarily to throw everything under the sun at people. We see a lot of innovation around tools that provide those organizing rubrics. I see the future of education being in tools that allow people to organize this Liquid Library in a way that’s meaningful and productive for them.
ABN: It sounds like you think in the place of an educator frequently. I’d like you to imagine a classroom in the future where every student is coming in with this kind of access to information. How would education look different?
MR: The big difference is going to be the role of the teacher. The teacher is going to be a facilitator more than a presenter of content. The student will be much more able to collaborate with his or her peers. They’ll also have content that adjusts much more specifically to the level that they’re at. Right now you have one teacher presenting the same content at the same time, with a classroom of kids who are at 30 different levels absorbing things very differently. When you’ve got content that’s available at all different levels and kids who can collaborate, you are going to see a much more personalized experience and students who are empowered to learn at their own pace.
Movie poster for "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" (2005). Credit: © 2005 Disney Enterprises, Inc.—Phil Bray/Walden Media LLCAP Images/PRNewsFoto/Buena Vista Pictures/AP Images.
ABN: I’d like to share with you a quote from C.S. Lewis. He’s describing his ideal day: “I would choose always to breakfast at exactly eight and to be at my desk by nine, there to read or write till one. If a cup of good tea or coffee could be brought to me about eleven, so much the better.” To me this represents a certain ideal of reading, a kind of getting lost in one’s reading. Do you think this quote will even make sense to people in the future?
MR: You know, it doesn’t appear that way. I’m not nostalgic about that quote. I don’t think it’s something we have to go back to. I think that was his perspective in the early 20th century, and when I look at everything that we need to do as a species—when I look at my kids and what makes them happy and healthy and productive—I think we’re beyond that. I don’t think it’s going to happen again, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.
I just think that we’re much more capable because of technology. It makes us more social, more able to work together collaboratively—we’re not as isolated as C.S. Lewis was. The sorts of things that nurtured his imagination are not the sorts of things that will make our kids or grandkids advance. If you look for a thinker like C.S. Lewis today, you’re probably not going to find one. The kinds of things that were important to him and to society then are not going to be useful for us now. And I think that’s fine; we’re evolving.