Friday, November 5, 2010

Bookish Review: I Live in the Future, and Here's How it Works

The Children's Book Council sent me a copy of Nick Bilton's new work when I missed the annual meeting. I found it to be an interesting read. Nick focuses on the fact that technological change has always been met with skepticism, fear, and even panic--and nothing has changed about that.

Nick is an advocate of embracing this change and utilizing new technologies to create richer experiences. After all, we're certainly not going back--no one's making 8-tracks or VHS tapes anymore and it's not as if everyone's going to suddenly stop using the internet.

I thought Nick had some interesting points, though his repetition of the phrase "bytes, snacks, and meals" was extremely annoying to me. Also, Nick emphasizes that people will pay for experiences, which is not untrue, but he seemed to completely discount the fact that people will also pay for content--his point seemed to be that good content is not enough, but he almost took it too far, as if good content was meaningless. I'm not willing to go that far; I believe people will pay for content and expertise as much as experience, but the book did make some good points.

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