Experiencing The Splinternet
As I was browsing my Google Reader last night, I chanced upon a book, DIY U : EduPunks, EduPreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education. Now I’ve always been passionate about education – I myself teach an Innovation Class in the Ateneo – and so I wanted to buy a copy, especially since it would be the full-length version of the fascinating FastCompany article that birthed it.
Now, this whole EduPunk phenomenon is an entirely different conversation in itself. But what I really want to focus on is my experience of fulfilling instant gratification by buying the ebook.
My transition from physical books to eBooks has been brewing for the past couple of years.
Of course, I started by improvising with my Mac – reading vertical PDF’s awkwardly on a horizontally-oriented screen. Then came the iPhone – and it kickstarted the reading experience on a handheld. After getting a sense of the numerous ebook readers that came out last year, I eventually bet on Barnes & Noble’s Nook and got one last November when it came out. And more recently, I got an iPad – which – intriguingly enough – has the Amazon Kindle App, iBooks, and (just awaiting release) Barnes & Noble’s eBook Reader App.
But here’s the rub. I’m beginning to feel The Rise of the Splinternet.
This new vocabulary was introduced by Groundswell author Josh Bernoff in this article.
Simply put – with the onslaught of these multiple devices, platforms, and software standards – competing companies such as Apple, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble – have created walled gardens, as opposed to the open playground the internet was supposed to be.
Josh shares this summary table :
Now, i felt this first-hand when I tried to buy my ebook.
The reason I bought the Nook before international release is because I bet on the fact that it would would eventually have international presence – meaning I could buy online from their storefront all the way from the Philippines – a feature that the Amazon Kindle already has. Unfortunately, this hasn’t happened yet.
Now, I could have bought the Kindle, but at that time it didn’t provide PDF support. More importantly, Amazon created their own proprietary ebook format, and shunned the cross-hardware-platform ePub – which the Nook embraced with open arms.
So it really is kind of a tangled mess. Because the Nook could read the ePub format, i was able to buy ebooks from different sources outside of B&N and load it in, while waiting their international presence. But along came the iPad, which made my decision-making process ever more complicated.
My ideal situation is that I could buy an ePub book which I can then read on my Nook, on my Mac, on my iPhone, and on my iPad. I really don’t have that option right now.
B&N doesn’t have international sales yet; The iPad has iBooks which can read ePub, but it’s not yet available in the Philippines. Amazon Kindle is on the iPad/iPhone, but it’s not in ePub format and hence I can’t load it on my Nook.
I eventually bought the Amazon Kindle ebook, because it was the only avenue I could buy this book from, as it wasn’t available in the ePub online bookstores yet.
Whatever happened to Openness? Can’t we all just get along?
