About This Blog

5:1 Content is about A New Kind Of Book (ANKOB) in which content travels on five different highways. Content that arrives together -- in one "book" -- at any time -- on any screen at the speed of light.

Text + Graphics + Audio-Video + Links + Social Media.

We're talking digital "books" where you have the option to control everything with an All-media Visual (Mind) map. It's like nothing you've seen before. Read the PREFACE to begin a wondrous journey.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Alchemy Of A Different Kind


 


Let's Play Alchemist

 To See If We Can Create Gold



We're now going to add some powerful stuff.

It's so vibrant it may someday become the basis for a stunning new way of navigating your personal time-space continuum.

In fact, we think ANKOB has the potential to evolve into a whole new publishing industry.

An industry where the word ”author” seems so limited and inadequate.

Perhaps “creator(Or, dare we say alchemist? Oh my!) is a better way to describe the process of combining writing with graphics and audio-video using all the previously mentioned platforms

Specifically:

  • Social Media
  • Cloud Computing
  • ALL-media Visual (Mind) Maps
  • eBooks using DNL Reader and format. [See tab on menu bar.]

We think so.

Now, since those reading this post will likely be quite familiar with Social Media and Cloud Computing, we won't dropkick you into the Pit Of Boredom (POB) by discussing either.

Instead, we'll be devoting considerable time in the future to get you acquainted with All-media Visual (Mind) Maps and the DNL Reader and format.

While Mind Maps can be used in astounding ways, we'll mostly talk about how they can be used as a Control Room or Dashboard for the remaining parts of ANKOB.

Once you see the amazing range and capabilities of “books” created using the DNL format, you'll be gobsmacked, as the British like to say.

Comes now a little metaphor to better understand what we're talking about.

It's the STARTER, You Dumb Ass!“

[“Dumb Ass” as in “Dumb Donkey”]

Sourdough bread “starter” became famous during the time of the Klondike Gold Rush in August 1896.

Starter needed to be carried by prospectors over the infamous Chilkoot Pass in order to have a stable and sustainable bread to eat while panning for gold in the Yukon wilderness.


Earlier we said you are a “finishing author” and you are – in two ways.

  1. As described in the Preface on the above navigation bar, you write your own story in Cyberspace as you sail the Sea Of Discovery. A voyage where you turn information into knowledge.
  2. You can personalize, modify, and change any ANKOB by using all the platforms and tools to discover, select, create, and then add new information and knowledge that is meaningful to you.

It's a concept NO OTHER “book” can match. None.

No other information/knowledge system contains as much --- in one package --- on any screen --- at any time --- the interconnected world of ANKOB.

HUNGRY? You set about collecting the ingredients and bake some bread.

Who doesn't love fresh-baked bread?
  • ANKOB provides the recipe, basic ingredients, starter, kitchen, utensils, oven, and fire.
  • You modify the recipe if you wish, add your ingredients, knead the dough, stick it in the oven, and bake the bread.
  • Best of all, you get to sit by the fire and eat it exactly as you want and need.

Importantly, no matter the task or subject at hand, everyone is DIFFERENT.
Everyone has different needs, wants, desires, knowledge, skills, talent,
ability, ad infinitum.

This existing and undeniable difference is where most systems of presenting information (and offering the potential for gaining knowledge) falls pitifully short.

It's where all printed books and articles fail to get you fully involved.

They do not have complete and efficient ways for you to interact based on
your life experiences, knowledge, and skill set.

ANKOB's offer a TOTAL PACKAGE that engages all the senses except taste
and smell.

We're working on taste; delicious chocolate to start.

Smell is another matter. Think what an explosive “rotten egg” Flame War could erupt in this Brave New World of Politically Correct Speech. 

Say what? Weapons of Mass Ex-stink-tion?

New ways of presenting information and knowledge are popping out of the
ether everywhere. Here's one example of a paradigm-disrupting teaching concept by Salman Khan at his Khan Academy.

He's in process of radically changing the way people learn mathematics and many other subjects. (Over 2,500 short 10 minute videos to date.)

One reason Bill Gates invested in the Academy, and his children use the Khan Academy, is because of the unique way the courses are taught with superior content.

Students START at the place where they don't know, go back and recover
missed or forgotten knowledge, and learn new material at their own pace and and time.

And, they do so 365 days/year and any place on the planet with a computer and Internet access.

Best of all, they do it based on THEIR OWN NEEDS AND DESIRES.

So,, they are free to choose the level of math they need for their specific wants or interests. [Not everybody needs calculus to count sheep. This Flock doesn't. :-)]

If you take the time to peruse his site you may want to “ponder” how much more his already terrific system could be improved. 
 
Imagine if he added “text book” ANKOB's to accompany his videos. Including, of course, well-crafted All-media Visual (Mind ) Maps. This would be an exciting and amazing addition to any particular course or segment thereof.

One possibility is a mind map with each node representing a chapter of the text book; said chapter to be in the form of a DNL-formatted mini-ebook.

The DNL eBook "chapter" would contain the related instructional video along with the text and graphics. 

One could even insert a window within the book into which the student could make notes, draw a graph, or try different problem solutions using his/her pen tablet. 

Best of all, then saving the effort within the DNL ebook for future discussion or review. Think about that!

Next comes a closer examination of the ANKOB components. 

 

Friday, November 18, 2011

A New Kind Of Book (ANKOB)


ANKOB
A New Kind Of Book
About A New Kind Of Book

An Interactive All-Media Experience You Help Create And Control


A Radical New Kind Of Book


Get ready to experience a really, really different world.

You are, in the next moments, about to discover and read a "book" that does not yet exist.

In part, it's not on a server in one place or another. In total, it's not fully written or in print.

It patiently awaits somewhere in a future space-time continuum. It will be created, modified, read, and expanded on the fly. Instantly.

Best of all, on many levels, YOU are both a reader and finishing author.
We simply provide the ingredients with which you finish baking the bread.

Your book will be quite different than ours. Different from all others. Unique.
Individual. Yours only.

Let's see how and why.

ANKOB COMPONENTS

The most important component is the source of all knowledge and wealth.

The HUMAN MIND.

Your mind.
Other minds.
Our minds.

Minds coming together to use tasty ingredients and marvelous tools; all in one place, on any screen, at any time.

An informational Knowledge Package of the important kind where you participate in a radical concept limited only by your interests and how long you live.

CONTENTS:

  • LINKS
  • TEXT
  • GRAPHICS
  • AUDIO – VIDEO

    SUPPORTING PLATFORMS
  • Social Media
  • Cloud Computing
  • ALL-media Visual (Mind) Maps
  • eBooks using DNL Reader and format.


Comes Now A “Dazzlement”

Get ready for what may pancake you to the floor in catatonic awe. Carefully read what Kevin Kelly recently wrote:

I have a piece in the August 2010 issue of the Smithsonian magazine, their 40th Anniversary issue.
They commissioned 40 views of the future. I wrote about the future of reading, or what they titled ...

Reading in a Whole New Way.

An excerpt:

And it demands more than our eyes. The most physically active we may get while reading a book is to
flip the pages or dog-ear a corner. But screens engage our bodies. Touch screens respond to the
ceaseless caress of our fingers. Sensors in game consoles such as the Nintendo Wii track our hands
and arms. We interact with what we see.
Soon enough, screens will follow our eyes to perceive where we gaze. A screen will know what
we are paying attention to and for how long. In the futuristic movie Minority Report (2002), the character played by Tom Cruise stands in front of a wraparound screen and hunts through vast archives of information with the gestures of a symphony conductor.

Reading becomes almost athletic. Just as it seemed weird five centuries ago to see someone read silently, in the future it will seem weird to read without moving your body. Books were good at developing a contemplative mind.

Screens encourage more utilitarian thinking.
A new idea or unfamiliar fact will provoke a reflex to do something:

to research the term,
to query your screen “friends” for their opinions,
to find alternative views,
to create a bookmark, to interact with or tweet the thing rather than simply contemplate it.

Book reading strengthened our analytical skills, encouraging us to pursue an observation all the way
down to the footnote.

Screen reading encourages rapid pattern-making, associating this idea with another, equipping
us to deal with the thousands of new thoughts expressed every day.

The screen rewards, and nurtures, thinking in real time.

  • We review a movie while we watch it.
  • We come up with an obscure fact in the middle of an argument.
  • We read the owner’s manual of a gadget we spy in a store before we purchase it rather than after we get home and discover that it can’t do what we need it to do.

If you delight in reading the work of deep thinking, insightful, and highly intelligent people, dock your ship at Kevin Kelly's pier for a cargo of wisdom.

You will learn something.

While we wait for Kevin Kelly's future, let's get on with our story in the next post, Part 2.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Welcome To The World Of ANKOB


ANKOB as in A New Kind Of Book.

A new world that promises to abruptly adjust your Normalcy Bias, Behavioral Script, and preconceived ideas related to how you think about "books".

You are going to marvel how your world of information will experience a Big Bang of the universal kind.

Load up, fasten your seat belt; your new world awaits.