The networked book is a form that helps us reconstruct and understand the prolific and increasingly granular world of information that surrounds us. Moreover, the networked book sets up formats that are often designed to update continually, incorporating new information and reconfiguring the book to accommodate new content and present it coherently.
Jonathan Harris' 10 x 10 [2] builds its content from RSS feeds. The piece selects the most frequently used words from the major news networks to assemble an hourly "portrait" of our world. This visualization tool represents a type of structure that we will soon see in networked books. The human editor/programmer creates the search and visualization function and the machine then collects, edits, and presents text and images according to criteria built into the program. This type of "book" format depends on granular content that can be "manipulated and reaggregated" by a tool.
The Networked Book is SocialSocial software environments create spaces for communal authorship. They allow raw, unedited content to be collectively assembled within the nascent form of the electronic book itself, facilitating a gestational space for content to evolve from spontaneous discussion into an edited "book" according to the activity of the social network.
LiveJournal [3] is a useful model for socially networked books. See also McKenzie Wark's GAM3R 7H30RY 1.1, an open book experiment produced by the Institute for the Future of the Book.
The multiple-author forum creates a different kind of thinking environment. Individual points of view are mediated by multiple voices. This may allow for a more democratic approach to issues and a multifaceted rendering of topics not possible in the single-author print model.
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