Arthur Attwell

Today I received mail from Barnes & Noble saying that their new NOOKStudy app is available for download. I was chuffed. I think good ereader software aimed at students would be great, and has the potential to make a huge impact on learning in developing countries. In South Africa, digital textbooks could solve many of our distribution and price problems, as long as the rollout of computer labs in libraries and schools continues apace, and the cost of computing continues to drop.

I recently finished reading Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon's great history of the origins of the Internet, Where Wizards Stay Up Late. Early in its story, it describes JCR Licklider's vision for computing when he first started working on networking projects in the late 1950s:

The idea on which Lick's worldview pivoted was that technological progress would save humanity. The political process was a favorite example of his. In a McLuhanesque view of the power of electronic media, Lick saw a future in which, thanks in large part to the reach of computers, most citizens would be "informed about, and interested in, and involved in, the process of government." He imagined what he called "home computer consoles" and television sets linked together in a massive network. "The political process," he wrote, "would essentially be a giant teleconference, and a campaign would be a months-long series of communications among candidates, propagandists, commentators, political action groups, and voters. The key is the self-motivating exhilaration that accompanies truly effective interaction with information through a good console and a good network to a good computer."

Geekrebel posted a very exciting press release today, accouncing a joint venture between Vodacom and Nedbank to bring the M-PESA mobile money solution, hugely successful in Kenya and Afghanistan, to South Africa. M-PESA allows anyone with a cellphone to transfer money without a credit card or bank account. In Kenya, it has become commonplace to accept M-PESA payments for products from groceries to flights, and has greatly increased safety for people who now no longer need to travel with cash. As a payment method, M-PESA could allow online retailers to sell to markets that till now have not been accessible because they have not had credit cards.

This morning at Tools of Change, I gave this presentation. In short, I argue that in order to sell content into Africa, publishers can't rely on print distribution, or even ebook distribution as we know it. They are going to need to let people on the ground repackage and distribute their content in unpredictable ways.

The Harvard Business Review November magazine includes an article on clean tech that opens with a story about Thomas Edison. It explains how technology does not replace technology – systems replace systems.

Edison … realized that the technology he envisioned—no matter how innovative—couldn’t by itself sweep aside the kerosene-based lighting industry. Instead of asking how he could solve the technical problem of inventing a lightbulb, Edison asked how he could get consumers to switch from kerosene to electricity. He understood that despite the many advantages of electric light, it would replace kerosene only if it had its own, economically competitive network.
So, while scores of people worldwide worked on inventing a lightbulb, Edison conceived a fully operational system. His technical platform included generators, meters, transmission lines, and substations, and he mapped out both how they would interact technically and how they would combine in a profitable business.

That is, of course, exactly what the publishing industry needs for ebooks. And many large companies are certainly trying to get such systems right. In its own monopoly-ridden way, Amazon has done this well, setting high standards for a simple, integrated acquisition-to-reading system.

Edison first rolled out his system in Lower Manhattan, where buildings were close together and potential investors lived and worked. If it was going to work anywhere, it was going to work there, and be a model for expansion elsewhere.

The Kindle, and its US market, is that Lower Manhattan to the rest of the world, where digital publishing in many forms will enable massive leaps forward for the sharing and selling of information. iBooks may be another. They are precursors to a much greater revolution, perhaps as fundamental as electrification itself; and for all our grumbling about their flaws, we're lucky to have them.

(Thanks to Michelle for the HBR article.)

With the O'Reilly Tools of Change conference coming up in February, James Turner (writing for O'Reilly Radar) interviewed me and Ramy Habeeb of Kotobarabia about ebooks in Africa (me) and Arabic ebooks (Ramy). We seem to be the conference's two developing-country experts, and perhaps this shows in our focus on ebooks and digitization as tools for upliftment and knowledge-preservation. We're clear that those priorities should be integral to our business interests.

I particularly like this practical approach Kotobarabia has developed to dealing with the difficulties of digitizing Arabic works:

The thing that we do is to scan the pages, and then we'll have people read the pages and pick out key words so that the books become semi-searchable. We do these for most of our books. But if we find that a book is being read over and over again or that this title has a particular interest, then we'll go back and retype it. It's actually cheaper this way to do it, it's a more sustainable business model.

If you don't feel like reading the article, there's audio of each interview there too.

Book Industry Communication (BIC) has published a code of practice for assigning ISBNs to digital content. (I've included the full text below. Here's the original PDF.) The code is sensible in some ways, and less so in others, as I'll explain in a moment. On the whole, though, it's good to see efforts like this towards industry standards.

I'm a big fan of Exact Editions, mainly for their great iPhone app, Exactly. Exact Editions puts magazines online looking exactly as they do in print (only with clickable links and great viewing functionality). Browsing the catalogue today, I was pleased to see a growing number of good-looking magazines on and from Africa.