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> I'd much rather see a team take existing hardware, existing operating system, and develop an app for it that acts as much as possible like the "Young Lady's I
by NotOscarWilde 13y ago
> I'd much rather see a team take existing hardware, existing operating system, and develop an app for it that acts as much as possible like the "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" from Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age."
I guess that's any compsci person's dream when they read that book, including mine.
One thing that I've noticed in recent days is something that is related to Popcorn Time (another top story on HN as of this time) -- young people love streamlined workflows and tend to avoid complex ones.
I think this observation is reflected in many popular apps/services of today (Facebook, WhatsApp, Spotify) but also in many startups -- most ones are like Uber and deliver something that we already know and use (taxis) but with a streamlined process.
I am getting a bit worried that this migration to the simple is killing a lot of projects that are noble, but "clunky". OLPC might have been one of those -- the interface was never as polished as Uber/Spotify, even though they certainly aimed at it being rather simple.
And here's my main point: I am worried Project Gutenberg is exactly one of those projects that will disappear because they're clunky in the eyes of the young.
The website is old-looking (a Wikimedia engine, likely) and it is not that easy (compared to shopping for apps on a phone) to search for the right book -- look for Emile Zola and you will have to look for many, many results, some of them being the same book but in a different language (and there is no sorting based on say your location).
Worst of all -- most consumer ebook devices are pushing their own bookstores, making it more difficult to load and read books from outside sources such as Gutenberg.
Loading up tons of free books to any kid's "device" sounds like the first baby step to a Primer, and yet even the basic foundation of that -- Project Gutenberg -- is as clunky as OLPC (and lacks a lot of old books, too).