[EAS]Future of Publishing

pjk pjk at design.eng.yale.edu
Mon Jul 16 21:41:27 EDT 2001


Subject:   Future of Publishing

Further to the earlier message
<http://www.yale.edu/engineering/eng-info/msg00870.html>
the item below is another reminder that speaks to the future of course
text books.  --PJK

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(from NewsScan Daily, 16 July 2001)
 http://www.newsscan.com/newsscan/newscup.html

     "It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if
the audience is deaf." (Walter Lippman)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: THE FUTURE OF PUBLISHING
     In their book "Sense & Respond" -- about doing business in the
emerging Network Era -- Harvard Business School professors Stephen
Bradley and Richard Nolan offer these thoughts about what publishing
in the future:
     "Publishing is an industry that will be radically restructured by
multimedia and networking technologies. The publisher of the
Encyclopedia Britannica is a now infamous example of a firm that did
not understand how technology would affect its industry. Managers
thought they were in the business of selling beautiful books
containing a vast store of the world's information. Because they
considered CD-ROMs to be a fad or a minor new market, they sold the
electronic rights to the encyclopedia, and very soon thereafter the
firm went bankrupt. Clearly, a CD-ROM that describes the political
situation leading up to the dropping of the atomic bomb, provides
multicolor maps of the bomb site, plays video clips of survivors and
audio clips of President Truman's speech on the event, and is
cross-linked to articles on the medical treatment for radiation
sickness provides an enormously richer experience than the traditional
book. And an encyclopedia that can be easily updated and distributed
on the World Wide Web is even better. The new Encyclopedia Britannica
has in fact reemerged on the web.
     "The new technology is, of course, not only a threat to the
publishing industry, but an enormous opportunity to create new value.
'Becoming a Manager,' a book written by Linda Hill of the Harvard
Business School, deals with the problems encountered by an individual
employee in an organization when he or she becomes a manager. It
provides some sound advice and a rich set of examples that help the
reader to understand some of the problems one may encounter in
becoming a manager. But consider how much more valuable the book
becomes when accompanied by a CD-ROM illustrating real problems and
situations involving real people and personalities. With this new
technology, Hill becomes a personal trainer, helping readers through
the complexities of the case and providing practical advice on how to
respond to similar situations. In the long run, this type of
experience can be delivered over the Internet as well."

See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0875848354/newsscancom/ for
"Sense and Respond: Capturing Value in the Network Era," by Stephen P.
Bradley and Richard L. Nolan.(We donate all revenue from our book
recommendations to adult literacy programs.)







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