A Beautiful Future for Digital Books

If you haven’t watched it yet, do take the time to take a look at the conceptual video IDEO has put together, presenting three possible experiences that digital books on a tablet could offer. It’s pretty interesting stuff, and although most comments seem to be excited about the first example (“Nelson”) — which is sort of what some of the magazines apps have been offering, but on steroids — but I quite liked what I saw with the third example (“Alice”), which suggests new ways of presenting a narrative, pumping up the interactive angle to a level that almost resembles a game. I know that Tim Kring, the creator of the Heroes TV series, is exploring similar types of narrative — what he calls “transmedia” — with his Conspiracy for Good project.