the book is dead. long live the book.

Whether you are a fanatic or just a digital explorer, you’ve probably begun to experience the fade of the written word in one form or another. As a small example, one thing I have noticed is that during my 2hr daily commute I am increasingly seeing less people reading off of paper in favor of consuming media in some sort of relevant/personal format (audio books, video podcasts, mobile RSS articles, mobile news feeds or just browsing the web on their laptop). As this shift continues more an more services like James Bridle’s surely will pop up.

It is a project he created to launch experiments off of that push the convergence of user experience, computer science and traditional publishing. From the site:

“…in what ways will the stories that we tell be affected by the ways in which we receive them, and what new forms will arise?”

“Booktwo.org will be running a series of projects…we don’t have the answer, but we’re looking forward to finding out.”

Swotter is one such project. It basically reads books to Twitter, and via Twitter to YOU. You can currently follow James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ right now if you just head over to BookTwo’s twitter page and click follow.

Interesting enough (and in true “rich idea” form), you read all about the project on the site, including instructions on how to run your own Swotter.