I recently starting reading GAM3R 7H30RY, the innovative networked book by McKenzie Wark with the support of the Institute for the Future of the Book. I’ve not gotten far enough into the work to form a  conclusion about it but here are my initial observations.

I like the way that the book is structured as a Web site that allows dialogue and feedback at the paragraph level. You can view a paragraph of text and then see the comments in a sidebar - neat! There’s also a discussion forum. I’m also impressed that the site is built as a customized theme on top of Wordpress. While the graphic design is rather bland and the color scheme seems more appropriate for a pre-teen girl, it’s still a good effort.

I really like the way that you can subscribe to a feed and receive five paragraphs a day. It’s great how the feed starts from the beginning on the day that you subscribe rather than forcing you to go back and catch up with everything. Of course, it’s not a blog but it makes very good use of the way that I read blogs (i.e., bloglines). I would like to see this approach adopted in other projects that have a lot of text. Yeah, I always mean to go back and read those fifty page PDF documents that I download but, somehow, never get around to it. So, getting a reasonably sized daily delivery into my news reader means that I’m more likely to read (or, at least, skim) most of GAM3R 7H30RY.

The writing style of GAM3R 7H30RY seems a little hyper, as if I’m reading some Wired magazine article but maybe it will get better. One thing about presenting books on the Web in this manner is that you don’t have the usual conventions of a book’s print layout that informs you about how you should think about this book: is it a serious academic study or is it a breezy opinion piece.

My biggest problem, and maybe it’s only my problem, is that I still don’t know how to read this type of online book. With a printed book of non-fiction I take the classic approach to reading the blurb on the dust jacket, then the table of contents, then skimming the book from cover to cover to get a full for the text, perhaps dropping in to read a few sections closely. Then I go back to the beginning and read the intro or first chapter.

I’m sure that someone can argue that you can take the same approach here. I tried that with GAM3R 7H30RY and it just didn’t quite work for me. To their credit there is a section labeled “How to read this book” on the GAM3R 7H30RY site but I didn’t locate that until I’ve used the site a few times. Of course, users hardly ever look at those type of pages anyway.

Of course, we’re at the very early stages of placing such books online (and I do consider them books even if they’re not in print). We’re in the very early stages of defining the conventional structures for networked books. Yet, one of the benefits and possible drawbacks of networked books is that there may never be a universally defined structure as there is in print. But, I suspect one will develop even if it’s not the best structure. Just as accepted structures, however flawed, developed early on for Web sites, the same will happen for networked books. For that reason, it’s very important that there be a lot of discussion about these issues in the early stages.

Computer games often have a high learning curve (at least for those of us who are not 12). When I play a new game I often have to use the tutorial to get started. Again, though, I notice that isn’t true when I observe a 12 year old use the same game for the first time. But with games, learning to master the interface, the controls, movement and the weaponry are an essential part of playing computer games. I’m not sure that we want to require readers to learn navigational structures for each new networked book. So, it would be nice to see what features and functionality works and what doesn’t. At the same time, I would hate to see people locked into a box. I suspect that in the future there might be a career for networked book designers just as there is for print book designers.

I know that the Institute for the Future of the Book is working on something called Sophie (PDF) that appears to have some promise in developing networked books. I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

One of the problems in reading GAM3R 7H30RY is the ease of commenting and providing feedback. What is that a problem? Isn’t that one of the great features of networked books?

I find myself wanting to respond, to comment, too quickly because of the way that GAM3R 7H30RY is structured and presented. As I read I realize that I may be forming conclusions too quickly, that I’m only reading a section of a chapter, that I may not have grasped the author’s full argument. In these bit-size chunks, it’s difficult to retain the context of the author’s argument. I’m concerned that if I make a comment on paragraph 003 that at paragraph 005 I will have realized the foolishness of my thoughts as the author expanded his explanation. But, I suspect some readers will jump in and start blasting away comments as they go.

Indeed, in the comments to the first chapter of GAM3R 7H30RY, this is the case when someone makes a comment and GAM3R 7H30RY author McKenzie Wark responds, “You might want to read on a bit more and then decide if i’m missing the point or not.” In another comment, just two paragraphs latter, Wark replies to another reader, “You’re only a bout 900 words in to the book. The ’stereotype’ as you put it is about to get flipped around.” So, perhaps people should refrain from comments before reading the entire book. But, that seems to bring up a serious problem with presenting books in this fashion. Or, at least, with the ways that one reads such a book. Or, the way one writes such a book. At this point, I find myself wanting to read the entire text before commenting on specific points at the GAM3R 7H30RY site.

I look forward to continue reading GAM3R 7H30RY and applaud McKenzie Wark and the Institute for the Future of the Book in their efforts. My criticism (recognizing that it is easier to criticize than create) is simply based on trying to think about what does and doesn’t work in this environment. We’re still at the very early stages of learning to read and write in this medium.

New Media and Learning in the 21st Century is a small article in the Jan/Feb 2006 issue of EDUCAUSE REVIEW by Lev Gonick - the CIO of Case Western Reserve University. Gonick writes about new media literacy and MediaVision, which is a search tool for the first-year courses captured on video. Other universities also are developing similar projects to capture lectures, courses, and other academic activities on digital video. It’s an endeavor that I expect will become increasingly popular.

Students are spending two to three times more hours on their subject matter and are able to watch and search for key concepts, to outline subjects, and so forth. In some courses, historic benchmarked performance data is shifting positively for the first time in decades. When students are surveyed about MediaVision Courseware, they say it is “cool.” But, like wireless access, such courseware is simply de rigueur. For them, integrated streaming media courseware is an entirely normal extension of how they live, play, and learn.

Gonick also says something clearly aimed other administrators:

…it will be the ways in which we leverage the latest generation of infrastructure for teaching and learning that will differentiate and distinguish academic institutions.
….

The next decade may well be seen by future historians as transformational. The internalizing of the institutional imperative to absorb and project future success through new media will change the dynamic forever. Clearly, old patterns of hierarchies, research traditions, and teaching and learning practices will not disappear overnight. However, just over the horizon, many of the contradictions experienced during the first evolutionary phase of the new media revolution will be resolved. The prestige of our institutions may well depend on that.

There’s a set of very good tutorials by Jon Udell on the O’Reilly Network under the title Primetime Hypermedia. I’ll be commenting about several of these in more detail later but for anyone involved in new media in higher education, they are worth a look:

Writing and editing will remain the foundation skills they always were, but we’ll increasingly combine them with speech and video. The tools and techniques are new to many of us. But the underlying principles–consistency of tone, clarity of structure, economy of expression, iterative refinement–will be familiar to programmers and writers alike.