Books as a social technology
Annika Hupfeld, Tom A. Rodden · 2014
E-books are becoming ubiquitous. Whether or not they will eventually replace books or merely complement them, there is a concern that something important might be lost in moving from print to digital books. While there is a wealth of research into the challenges and opportunities of e-reading, there is little research aiming to understand the broader role of books in everyday life. Rather than speculating on what books are in the digital age, in this paper, we wish to ask what books do. To do so, we conducted a series of in-depth interviews with ten UK households to understand everyday uses of books. Our findings suggest that books are not merely reading technologies but a resource for everyday social and personal engagements. We discuss re-framing books as social technologies and implications for the design of e-books.