I had no real interest in blogging about the iPad yesterday. Yes, I awaited the arrival of this new device like a child on Christmas Eve: what kind of magical, shiny new gadget would Santa Steve leave for me under the tree this year? Did I have room on my Amex to make my life a little more connected and future friendly? Yes, I was curious and eager and my mind ran amok with what it would all mean, but I also knew that loads of bloggers and writers would explore these far reaching ramifications of the device and I didn't think I had anything unique to say, so saw no reason to jump into the conversation. After the fact, my only wish (besides a built in camera) was that William Gibson's marketing wizard/ symbol sensitive heroine from 'Pattern Recognition', Cayce Pollard, were a real person and that she could have dissuaded Santa Steve from labeling the device with such a repugnant name. But it's just a name. Well until today, when I read that J.D. Salinger had died. R.I.P Mr. Salinger. I have enjoyed everyone's quotes and tweets reflecting on the man's literary genius. And I have to say it: I have NEVER read any Salinger. Hello, embarrassing! I have no good reason for this blunder, except that I went to school in Canada and it was never on any school reading lists, nor was I assigned it in college; it was always Shakespeare and Milton Friedman for me. My initial reaction to seeing the first tweet was 'wow, Salinger was still alive?' then, 'frak I need to download Catcher in the Rye!'. The convergence of the past and the future present in one thought, of course, made me think: with the birth of the iPad came the symbolic death of the page. Maybe there is something to write about after all.
  
Ok- I have no doubt there are countless other writers out there putting forth this same romantic, symbolic observation. The weathered dust jacket of a spine ravaged, hard backed novel as a metaphor for our past and the sleek eco-friendly aluminum casing of the iPad as our future. What I wish to think on, however, is how will we find the next Salinger, when the consumption of the written word transitions into the digital era? The past is full of rich stories about how our idolized writers ended up reaching the masses. I am half way through a biography on Max Perkins, the revered editor from Scribners deemed responsible for finding and shepherding the careers of Fitzgerald and Hemingway. I have little doubt, after reading this book, that Fitzgerald (especially) would never have succeeded as a published writer, had it not been for the supportive, guiding hand (and early monetary advances) of Perkins. A publishing house, both then and now, invests much in its writers, as printing, marketing and shipping, let alone the creative guidance, all come at a high price...so finding that one editor to champion your storytelling is and was paramount. But this fiscal reality also reflects the essential barriers to entry. How many gifted writers never made it past those hallowed walls of Scribners, Random House or DoubleDay? What if Shane Leslie had never sent 'The Romantic Egoist' manuscript to Perkins? We may never have read Fitzgerald. Ever. His typed manuscript pages would have faded and wrinkled with time, lost forever. (Don't I sound dramatic??) But that is no longer the case- those barriers to entry have come tumbling down (and virtualized content storage prevents the page deterioration thing), especially after yesterday.
 
So it's 2019 and physical book publishing has ceased, save for expensive coffee table books of Helmut Newton's work from Taschen. Everything is consumed on a portable tablet of some sort, the lines of corporate and self publishing blurred....how do we find the new Salinger, the new Fitzgerald, and if we find them, will we accept them as such if there isn't the corporate stamp of physical approval behind them? What will a book really mean?
I find the magazine world offers up a good case study. With the proliferation of the internet came the blogs: the word press, blogger and tumblr platforms that enabled us to spread our stories, pictures, and observations without cost or permission. No one has been writing the great American novel though - too much content to consume at one sitting and the web is about bite size morsels. But with the iPad, maybe that will change. But how will we make this transition? The magazine empires slowly caught on to the necessity for a digital destination for their content. Not only did they digitally publish the articles that appeared in their physical magazines but also recognized the need to publish additional content, only available online. In essence, they added (and named it as such) a blog element to their magazines. Considering the nature of most magazine articles, this evolution was a necessity. How could you remain relevant when the hard content of the magazine was written a month or even months prior? So the blogging, to capture the frenzy of the real time nature of the web, came forth on myriad sites. Now, I can't tell them apart. And when I say them, I mean the articles that I read in this month's Wired are no different than the additional articles that I read on the Wired blog. Maybe the latter are shorter, but no less thought provoking and no less insightful. The blogger used to be a second class citizen to the 'published' writer but magazines and their necessary transition into digital entities (if they are to survive), are slowly equaling the playing field.
What does this spell then for the future of books? (And just as a side note, I'm not getting into monetization /divergent business model discussion or the evolution of the digital magazine as that's a WHOLE different topic!). Well, once we become conditioned to consuming most of our written content online, the site it lives on might not be so important anymore. Personally, the site that you are published on means nothing to me- I'm just interested in your content: is it good, does it teach me something, does it move me, do i want to share it with others? I'll post a link regardless if it's on VanityFair.com or JoeShmo.com. The former site, however, is a trafficked destination and the latter is probably not. So how would I find it, the great but obscure article? Word of mouth? And so how will I find the next great novel in the new iBook store populated with millions of titles where 1/3 of them never went through the traditional 'publishing' process and have no marketing budget behind them? Because you KNOW that something, no, many things, of brilliance are there, waiting to be found and read, regardless if Little Brown 'e-published' it or not.
I think the answer will lie with an advanced version of what we already see in use at Amazon.com and Netflix.com that suggests our next purchase or film to rent; sophisticated algorithms that can search across all platforms and deliver the best of the best, and even deliver you your own specific reading list. These algorithms will pull your preference for topics, authors, writing style, tone, setting, point of view, politics...maybe even reflect your dreams (from the types of 'wish lists' that you build on line and sites you visit). And if we have been weaned off the idea that a great writer has to have his or her words rest within two book flaps, then the evolution of the book has succeeded. But that's just my (rather lengthy) two cents. How do you see the next great American (or Canadian, Haitian, etc) writer taking birth in this new digital era? William Gibson wrote 'Neuromancer' on a typewriter so anything is possible. Now time to read me some Salinger short stories on the New Yorker site and right the wrong of my eduction. 

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For an interesting article on the iPad check out the editor of @io9 writing about the 'crap futurism' of it. http://io9.com/5458822/why-the-ipad-is-crap-futurism
Great post Taryn, I'm excited about our continuing role in this transformation.  Interesting times indeed!
:):):)
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