Beyond the dead tree

The video above (from a nice post by Robin Ashford) highlights a more subtle conception of AR than the one I posted previously. It also highlights the belief that conventional media such as books might take on a new life. I'm currently reading Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age in which educational technology (in the form of the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer) shares centre stage with the best and worst of nanotech, not to mention human nature.

Of course, as in the video (and the novel), it is just as likely that it will be the next-generation iPad or Kindle that we reference, hopefully in some open format. We can see harbingers of this already in some of the innovative publication formats that have lately passed through FriendFeed Open Science.

• The Biochemical Journal in semantic format as seen via the Utopia engine, allowing readers to further analyse data (paper also reviews other approaches);
• The PLoS ONE collection of structural biology papers using the Molsoft ICM viewer;
• The entirely PDF-based approach used in this paper from Microscopy Research & Technique (NB 7 MB download; probably requires subscription).

Obviously we are, as ever, not "there" yet (closed source engines requiring an additional install are somewhat reminiscent of issues with our favourite virtual world) but, ho-hum, interesting times...