A fascinating interview with Philip Johnson, author of one of my favorite books of recent years, The Ghost Map. He thinks books are going to continue their rapid technological evolution, but ultimately aren’t going anywhere:
One of the things that’s fascinating about the Gutenberg era is how long it took them to invent the things we now take for granted. Gutenberg comes out with the book, and they figure out how to make an index 60 years later. They had 60 years of “You know, it would be really nice if we could look something up.”
We’re having comparable breakthroughs every six months now.