The Institute for the Future of the Book takes the next step in destroying the hegemony of print by launching GAM3R 7H30RY, a “networked book” that enables readers to comment on New School media studies professor McKenzie Wark’s work-in-progress about how playing videogames can alter the way we approach the reality around us. “The feedback you give, the conversations you join, the discussions you start elsewhere on the web and out in the world,” the Institute explains in an opening note, “all could have an impact on subsequent stages of this book, or at least help to shape its larger context. Our hunch is that a good conversation generated here will result in a better book.”
The site presents Wark’s philosophical musings with a cleverly designed layout that eschews a simple “next page” approach in favor of a “stack of cards” that breaks the text down into paragraph-size chunks with comments scrolling off to the side. And the work itself has an engaging quality that’s closer to Steven Johnson than to dry academic prose.