Who owns the networked future of reading?

Part 5.- Multiple-choice

You are going to read a magazine article. For questions 17-22, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.

Who owns the networked future of reading?

Some years ago, I came across a battered copy of the Science of the Lambs in a train carriage. It was during one of those lonely chunks of life when reading takes on a new importance, and I found a quite unexpected friend in that rather dark and worrying tale. The anonymous former owner had done little drawings and written notes in the margins of the book before inexplicably leaving it on public transport. Amusing, insightful and often unrelated to the actual text the previous reader’s commentary entirely changed my reading of Thomas Harris’s story of a serial murderer and obsessive police procedure.

My anonymous guide was a university student, most likely a young woman, studying the book from a feminist point of view. Harris’s novel is a superior police procedural, but still guilty of that genre’s casual sexism, picked apart by my guide with glee.

I’ve often wished that I could talk to that anonymous commentator. Today, if they were using an e-reader, I might be able to my using Readmill, an e-reading app that, on the surface at least, will be familiar to anyone who has read a book on their smartphone or tablet. But what makes this particular app a potential best-seller is how it helps readers and writers – talk to each other.

One of the word’s most popular e-readers Amazon’s kindle, let’s readers see which sections of a text have been underlined most frequently by other readers: a frustrating feature given what could be achieved. Amazon also provides a social network app for readers, but shows no sign of integrating it into its books. And it seems that the Kindle is unlike to ever truly embrace the power of networks.

The app Readmill aims to fulfil the potential of networked reading. Readers can underline and comment on a text as much as they like, then open up those comments for discussion among a growing community of passionate readers. It’s a simple but powerful feature that could be a serious threat to kindle technology.

But this is only the leading edge of the networked reading revolution. Readmill allows authors to claim ownership of their books and interact with readers in the margins of the text. So not only could I and my anonymous commentator debate the feminist critique of The Silence of the Lambs but, should he feel so inspired, Thomas Harris himself could respond, in a conversation directly related to the text itself.

To understand what a fully realized network reading experience might mean, imagine reading a book published in 2013 in the year 2063. In the 50 years between those dates, dozens of critical texts, hundreds of articles, thousands of reviews and hundreds of thousands of comments will have been made on the text. In a fully networked reading experience, all of those will be available to the reader of the book from within the text.

Authors are able to shape the discussion or their books; they can maintain a relationship with all the readers who have enjoyed their books, whether that is a few dozen or a few hundred million. And perhaps most interesting of all, readers can find each other through the books they read. In a world of seven billion people, the ability to find like minds has real value.

Of course, at a time when data privacy is a serious social issue the question is who owns the networked future of reading? Publishers might assume they do, but their failure to lead these innovations puts them at risk of becoming redundant. Amazon and the technology giants seem unstoppable. If that’s true, we face a future where every book and every comment about it is owned and profited from, by a handful or major corporations.

Readmill and other developers might yet deliver the future of reading back into the hands of readers and writers. But if this ideal is to become a reality, we’re going to have to rethink what it means to own a book, or any kind of information, even if you created it. Perhaps the networked future of reading belongs to no one, and therefore to everyone.

1.- In the first paragraph, the writer says he did not understand….

A) why everyone had made notes in the book he found.

B) how his friend could have read such an alarming story.

C) why someone had left the book on the train.

D) how the previous reader’s notes related to the story.

2.- The writer assumes that the reader who wrote the notes…

A) was very critical of the novel.

B) thoroughly enjoyed the novel.

C) was a great fan of crime fiction.

D) was impressed by the writer’s informal style.

3.- In the writer’s opinion, Readmill is likely to be particularly successful because it allows readers to…

A) comment on books they are reading.

B) communicate with other readers.

C) discuss other readers’ comments.

D) underlines passages of text.

4.- The additional feature of Readmill highlighted in the sixth paragraph allows…

A) a book’s author to change what he or she had written.

B) the writer of a book to join the readers’ debate.

C) readers to ask an author questions.

D) readers to comment without giving their name.

5.- What future development of network reading interests the writer most?

A) Authors will be able to find out why readers like their books.

B) Readers will have access to a wide range of book reviews.

C) Authors will be able to keep in touch with some of their readers.

D) Readers will be able to contact people with similar ideas.

6.- The writer hopes that Readmill and similar apps will…

A) make possession of books a more positive experience.

B) make book publishing more profitable.

C) strengthen the influence of major publishers.

D) change how people read and write books.