We don’t want to make websites instead of books. To understand what a digital book should be, it’s worth trying to perceive it as an information format, not a physical medium.
For an intelligent species, building a Dyson Sphere is a technological leap on a par with the discovery of fire for our ancestors. The transition from a planetary species to an interstellar species. It would usher in an age of exploration and expansion on a scale we can barely imagine.
The book is not designed for reading at a single sitting, but for several days or weeks. Therefore, the book should have a structure, reference tools and some mechanisms for gradual assimilation and learning.
When I take a screenshot, it feels like a tiny rejection of the logic of the contemporary corporate internet. Instead of offering up fragments of my photographic life to the computer gods, the screenshot feels like I’m stealing something back from the computational world for my own uses, removing it from the networked flow (sure, some of these... See more
Now imagine: how many programs and services make us wait more than 100ms? I’d say more or less all of them, starting with almost every website, with a few exceptions. You don’t think about “requesting” Google when you type your search query and it auto-completes after each letter. But you do think about rebooting your computer. Or booting up your... See more
I’m not talking about being afraid of space. That is a completely different thing. That's called astrophobia. Cosmic vertigo isn’t about fear of planets, aliens, darkness, or empty expanses. In fact, it’s not about fear at all. It is about awe.