Really

I attended two presentations at the SL Book Fair yesterday: An overview of the THiNC book and press, and a panel discussion on book technologies. Toneless Tomba presented THiNC books, and he also joined the panel with competitors Neo Rebus and Falk Bergman, with the discussion led by Maddyyy Schnooks.

THiNC produces a book “press” that enables users to sell and distribute books. I’ve heard that THiNC books can be hard to setup (but have no direct experience), and from the presentation my impression was that any difficulties are the result of ensuring that the books are secure. Apparently, including the textures that make up the book pages in the book itself would enable users to easily copy and distribute them to others.

Security came up in the panel discussion as well. Maddyyy Schnook pointed out that textures are never secure in SL, and can be easily copied, if you know how. One possible way to avoid texture theft would be to enable prims to display textures loaded from a URL; a feature Maddyyy claimed to be in the works. I asked the panel what other features they want to see in the future, and both Maddyyy and Neo Rebus mentioned more interactivity, for example being able to fold corners or scribble notes in the margin. CivilE Writer, in the audience, asked for a way to export books to a handheld or other device, essentially making it portable.

The discussion did not get very far in exploring ways to extend the notion of “books” in virtual world. The consensus seemed to be that books were an interface familiar and comfortable to users, so the best approach, for now, is to try to reproduce them as faithfully as possible. I’m more of the opinion that books in SL and virtual worlds will evolve to be more like the Ivory Tower of Primitives than a simulated stack of bound paper. However, the interest in the SL Book Fair shows that there is still plenty of life left in the book technology we are familiar with, and we’ll probably have book-like objects in virtual worlds for a long time to come.