Ingenious proof that publishing may have a future

A video, created originally for educational publisher Dorling Kindersley, offers a brilliant argument for why books, whether on the iPad or other format, have a future.

We read so that we can experience something true. You remember true--it's the thing you see so little of during a day at work.

So why do so many believe that books, publishing, and even reading are dead? Steve Jobs, after all, made books a considerable feature of his iPad launch presentation a few weeks ago.

Still, the management at U.K. educational publisher Dorling Kindersley asked a production company called the Khaki Group to create a film that showed what publishing would be like in the future, if anything.

The filmmakers came up with an enchanting piece that makes you think that while technologies may change at a blistering pace, people's basic needs may not.

Is it really true that people's attention span is too small for big ideas these days? Is it true that content is secondary to packaging? Is it true that the most important thing to people these days is what underwear Lady Gaga is wearing?

This film tries to answer those questions in a truly inventive way. It has now received a greater life of its own, as it was seen by the global chairman at Penguin Books, who seems to have found some salvation in its words.

We'll see in the future if book publishers rely on people lauding their books through Facebook or whether they might have some more progressive ways to present their products in the arenas provided by new technologies.

 

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