Interactive

From: Retronaut

"There's a pervasive arrogance in the approach of technologists to books. Every new wave of technology arrives with its techno-prophets, assuring us we'll no longer have to deal with those fusty old book things and their tiresome words. In the future all novels will be interactive multimedia experiences….

     We're in the process of shifting the book from paper page to digital screen, but what we actually choose to read are still chunks of text, around 100,000 words long give or take, which start at the beginning and finish at the end. No branching interactive story lines. No embedded multimedia widgets. And definitely no chance for the reader to mess it up by doing something silly. Or worse, mundane."
— Damien Walter, The Guardian
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Words Are Not Enough

Photo: Michael Hale

"Some speculate that the move to reading off electronic tablets will force writers into shorter and more direct narratives. Others worry that the rush to add video will turn writers into screenwriters on creative teams that produce novels as a branch of filmmaking, and they wonder if the nifty interactivity of video games can ever be applied to serious writing to create a new digital literature. As for us faithful readers, will we be hard-pressed to ever find a writer who can still produce a good old-fashioned novel?" — Kate Taylor, The Globe and Mail
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