Richard's Blog

 Posts Tagged ‘books’

As we develop Therap I try to think not just what is the right type of documentation for providers of service to people with developmental disabilities today but also what will the technology and documentation needs be in 2 years or 5 years or 10 years.  We enjoy discussing where technology is going and how it might affect documentation or privacy or hipaa or other issues.

Last year I had a blog post called “ Has Gutenberg’s 15th Century Printing Press Really Affected Most Daily Progress Notes Yet?”

Today there was an article called “From Scroll to Screen” in the New York Times Review of Books.  Essentially the article talks about the movement from the scroll to the bound book and makes comparisons to digital searching on ebooks. Some excerpts from the article are below and the whole article is available on the New York Times website linked here . (note codex refers to bound books in the excerpts below)

The last time a change of this magnitude occurred was circa 1450, when Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type. But if you go back further there’s a more helpful precedent for what’s going on. Starting in the first century A.D., Western readers discarded the scroll in favor of the codex — the bound book as we know it today.

The codex also came with a fringe benefit: It created a very different reading experience. With a codex, for the first time, you could jump to any point in a text instantly, nonlinearly.

But so far the great e-book debate has barely touched on the most important feature that the codex introduced: the nonlinear reading that so impressed St. Augustine.

We usually associate digital technology with nonlinearity, the forking paths that Web surfers beat through the Internet’s underbrush as they click from link to link. But e-books and nonlinearity don’t turn out to be very compatible. Trying to jump from place to place in a long document like a novel is painfully awkward on an e-reader, like trying to play the piano with numb fingers.

To me certain books work pretty well for the Nook for example – a novel or a piece of non-fiction which I didn’t have a need to search back and forth to find different information. However, I have found that travel guides are really difficult to use on the nook – and really the internet creates the best user experience in finding hotels (for conference planning or for travel) because you can just click on links and find new pieces of information.

It seems interesting to me how documentation will evolve as more and more entry level DSPs have significantly more experience on smartphones and the internet than senior people in an organization might have.

There will just be a different perspective on how one should be able to find information.  I had never before thought about the change from the scroll to a book almost 2000 years ago. Suddenly it was possibly to be searching around a document (a book) rather than have a scroll the size of a basketball court to lay information on to find something.

In some ways an e-book is completely different than a scroll in that you can search for keywords. But if you try using a Nook to find something and its either a common keyword or you don’t know the word – the Nook can be quite slow compared with flipping pages on a regular paper book.

What similar changes occur when going from paper to electronic documentation. There are many benefits to electronic documentation (electronic signatures, time and date stamping, knowing who read a document and more).  But it also is a change. And for people used to one technology (paper, scrolls, nooks, whatever) the act of switching can be a challenge.

These are actually some of my favorite discussions and sessions at conferences. Thinking about how to implement these changes in technology.

Happy New Year 2010.

I am back from Barbados. It was nice getting away and spending time with my family. Seeing a Christmas Show with songs like Calypso Christmas and Middle Pon Di Road was both fun and a new experience.

In addition to touch football on the beach and building sandcastles, I also had some time to read a mix of books.

Invictus – I read the original book “Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mendela and the Game that Made a Nation” and now plan on seeing the movie. This book was enjoyable reading on many levels from the historical to the strategic thinking behind Nelson Mendela’s approach to the Afrikaner community.

Trunk Music by Michael Connelly- I found this quite a good airplane read if you like detective books. A number of fun plots twists and I think one of his better books.

Beyond the Cloud by Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com. This was an interesting read – and in fact I am considering making a list of which of the 111 points that Marc Benioff mentions apply to Therap as well. Salesforce is the largest software as a service company – and the book lays out many of the benefits of SaaS and cloud computing. However, a number of the stories come off more as self congratulatory and written by their marketing department. I also have significant issues with some of his points – like why you have to hold sales/marketing/training events at fancy hotels or restaurants in order for people to feel comfortable with your service. This just seems like a waste of money to me. I particularly recommend the book for Therap users and potential users who want additional validation that the Software as a Service model is both the present and the future in many sectors.

Googled: The End of the World as We Know It by Ken Auletta. I have long enjoyed Ken Auletta’s writing – and this book continued that experience. The book covered all sorts of issues ranging from how google started to their effect on many industries and competitors. As someone (like most of us) who uses Google in so many ways – from google maps to my new droid to searches and gmail and more – it was interesting to see how they are so tied to searches and advertising. I am often thinking about what I am doing at Therap – and why can’t google or others do what we are doing. But our emphasis on electronic signatures and medicaid compliance and tracking all versions and minimizing time spent in documenting so people can get back to work – these are a fundamentally different approach and structure.

Defenders of the Faith: Charles V, Suleyman the Magnificent, and the Battle for Europe 1520-1536 by James Reston Jr. I don’t recommend this book in case any of you were going to rush out to buy it. I try and periodically read about different periods in history and I hadn’t previously read much about this period. But after several hundred pages of minor skirmashes and battles, and lots of marriages of different kings and queens and princes for political reasons – I was sort of expecting something to happen at the end of the book. Sort of like at the end of Invictus there was a game that the book led up to. I guess this book was just another chapter in history and it led up to whatever happened in 1537 to 1550 , and so forth. There were a couple of interesting strategic issues discussed – but I don’t think that makes it worth reading this book.

Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser. I am only about 1/3 finished with this book – but there have been some excellent chapters on privacy and security over the internet. The book is written by two lawyers who are directors of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

I hope you all enjoyed your holidays.

I look forward to continued discussions and dialogs with you in 2010.