The Great Ebook Throwdown
Ebooks are suddenly everywhere again. Kindle, Nook, iPhone . . . after 2000 years, the codex is getting an upgrade. But what kind of electronic books and electronic reading devices do we really want? Are we trying to improve on the book, or create something new? Something different? Are there some universal design principles we can agree on? And what about the bigger picture: can electronic gadgetry reverse the national decline in reading dramatically documented by agencies such as the NEA? This roundtable discussion led by Ben Bederson, Nick Chen, and Matt Kirschenbaum will feature as many electronic reading and electronic book devices as we can lay our hands on, including some prototypes being developed here at the University of Maryland. We'll hold them up, pass them around, turn them on, talk some trash, and, in the process, maybe gain just a little bit of insight into what we all want from our electronic book readers. Attendees are encouraged to bring along electronic book devices of their own.
Speakers
Benjamin B. Bederson is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and the previous director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies and iSchool at the University of Maryland. His research is on mobile device interfaces, information visualization, interaction strategies, digital libraries, and accessibility issues such as voting system usability. He is also co-founder and Chief Scientist of Zumobi, a startup offering a mobile content platform based on that research.
Nicholas Chen is a doctoral candidate in the department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland and is affiliated with the Human Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) at UMD. He is advised by Professor Francois Guimbretiere in the Cornell University Information Science Department. His research is on electronic reading devices, pen-based user interfaces, and interactions for supporting simultaneous use of multiple devices. Previously, he performed the first-ever evaluation of a dual-display electronic reading device.
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Maryland and Associate Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH, an applied thinktank for the digital humanities). He is also an affiliated faculty member with the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at Maryland, and a member of the teaching faculty at the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School. Kirschenbaum served as the first director of the new Digital Cultures and Creativity living/learning program in the Honors College at Maryland. A 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, he specializes in digital humanities, electronic literature, virtual worlds, serious games and simulations, textual studies, and postmodern/experimental literature. His first book, Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination, was published by the MIT Press in 2008.Mechanisms has won the 2009 Richard J. Finneran Award from the Society for Textual Scholarship (STS), the 2009 George A. and Jean S. DeLong Prize from the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP), and the 16th annual Prize for a First Book from the Modern Language Association (MLA). Much of his work now focuses on the critical and scholarly implications of the shift to born-digital textual and cultural production. He was principal investigator for the NEH funded start-up “Approaches to Managing and Collecting Born-Digital Literary Materials for Scholarly Use” and is also a co-investigator on the NDIIPP-and IMLS-funded project devoted to Preserving Virtual Worlds (2007 to present). In 2010 he co-authored (with Richard Ovenden and Gabriela Redwine) Digital Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage Collections, a report published by the Council on Library and Information Resources and recognized with a commendation from the Society of American Archivists. He also oversees work on the Deena Larsen Collection at MITH, a vast personal archive of hardware and software furnishing a cross-section of the electronic writing community during its key formative years, roughly 1985-1995. Kirschenbaum serves on the editorial or advisory boards of a number of projects and publications, including Postmodern Culture, Text Technology, Textual Cultures, MediaCommons, and futureArch. An avid tabletop gamer, he contributes to the group blog Play the Past devoted to meaningful play and cultural heritage. His work has received coverage in the Atlantic, New York Times, National Public Radio, Wired, Boing Boing, Slashdot, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. See www.mkirschenbaum.net for more.
News
Related Research
