The book as podcast

Eric Hellman has a super post about “the book as a container”. In it he defends the book as an excellent way to deliver content for which context is not as important as timelessness.

We need to understand what it is about the book that makes it a container of media that will persist into the digital world. It’s NOT context. The wonderful thing about the book as container is the same thing that lifts Radiolab as podcast above Radiolab as radio. It’s the timelessness. …So as we evolve the ebook, I think we need to be aware of and nurture its potential for timelessness. If we put the context first, as O’Leary urges, then all we have left is a website.

The technical communications community is often as guilty as any in rushing to publish everything as pdf/web/wiki/social/flavor-of-the-day. As publishing choices increase, it becomes more important than ever to choose the right media for your content, and not discard any choices just because they are “old”.