The future of books
When a new technology appears, it rarely replaces what came before it overnight. Instead, it coexists for a while, and then, at some point, the old model starts to look ridiculous. That's what happened with music. People bought CDs with each artist's predetermined sequence of songs. Then they bought individual tracks. Now they don't buy music at all; they stream it and let playlists drive discovery. Books will follow the same trajectory.
Today we think of books as fixed, sequential objects, but they don't have to be. The bible is a collection of texts written by multiple authors across centuries. Aristotle's books were collections of ideas and lecture notes recorded by his students. Montaigne pioneered the essay as a literary format with a book of what he called “essais” — personal reflections, philosophical inquiries, and observations on human nature. Even in fiction, Dickens and Dostoyevsky published stories in serialized installments for magazines and periodicals before compiling them into books. The idea of a book as a fixed-length, linear object is a byproduct of the mass-market paperback that defined the 20th century. When you're optimizing for affordability, portability, and widespread distribution in an analog world, a sequentially-ordered, 300-page narrative makes sense. But digital distribution changes that.
The Internet is breaking books apart again. A book no longer has to be a single, finished object. It can be a growing collection of essays, chapters, and articles. In fact, it will almost certainly have to be as the best writing moves online. Blog posts are the modern equivalent of Montaigne's “essais,” and rather than secure a book deal, many of the world's best thinkers are choosing to share their thoughts on the web to disseminate, debate, and refine their ideas in realtime.
As digital writing becomes the norm, books are likely to evolve into dynamic, non-linear experiences, created by tastemakers who compile disparate writings into a unified exploration of a topic, idea, or story. In other words, books will move closer to the playlist model that revolutionized music.
Imagine you want to learn about artificial intelligence. You can buy a book, but it might be out of date before you finished reading it. A better model is a dynamic collection of writings by experts like Andrej Karpathy, Andrew Ng, Dario Amodei, Noam Shazeer, and John Carmack — something you can fork, expand and customize depending on your level of expertise or individual interests. It can be instantly updated as new breakthroughs develop. And AI could even recommend additional material or generate new content to fill in gaps for you. It will be a learner's paradise.
Traditional books will persist, just as vinyl records and CDs still exist today. But over time, fewer people will read books as fixed objects. Instead, they’ll consume knowledge the way they consume music: personalized to their needs and interests.
