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BookTrack Adds Sound To Books
BookTrack is a startup company that promises to bring exciting movie-style soundtracks to otherwise dull, stodgy printed books. You know, those dead-tree versions of ebooks that you used to be able to buy at stores like Borders.
(BookTracks video)
"The Holmes novel [Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Speckled Band] starts with suitably filmic background music, and the ticking of a clock. Later, we enjoy a crackling fire (or paper being screwed up — it’s tricky to tell through the iPad’s terrible speaker. Headphones are recommended) and later, upon turning a page, I heard the sound of a a drawer being unlocked and a book pulled out.It’s incredibly jarring."
Philip K. Dick gives us a taste of what this might be like in his excellent 1965 novel The Zap Gun, when he writes about battery powered comic books.
Personally, I'm appalled at the idea of BookTracks, as regular Technovelgy readers have probably already guessed. Remember what Ray Bradbury says about books in Fahrenheit 451?
"My wife says books aren't 'real.'""Thank God for that. You can shut them, say, 'Hold on a moment.' You play God to it... Books can be beaten down with reason. But with all my knowledge and skepticism, I have never been able to argue with a one-hundred-piece symphony orchestra..."
Via Wired.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 8/26/2011)
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