Forking the book - Tools of Change for Publishing

"As one of the first mass produced industrial artifacts the book remains a solid cultural signifier of stability. That aura is pretty strong and attractive and makes it pretty hard to think about books as being anything other than static and stable. It appears to be part of their DNA. While we continue to refer to ebooks as ‘books’ stability seems to be carried on as part of the currency. We don’t really even challenge it. EPUBs and mobi (etc.) with their ‘self -contained’ exactly reproducible nature also appear to reinforce the static nature of things. Books are stable. Websites are not. That seems to be a delimiter that’s ‘in the air’. However this seems to be a little arbitrary these days. Books were only stable because of the (long brewing) perfect storm of the invention of the printing press, creation of copyright, and the evolution of authorship. Before these three things brought stability, books were added to as ideas changed and prose improved, just like websites. Now however books and websites are made of the same stuff. So its interesting to ask ourselves how long it will be before the book becomes unstable again..."