Friday, September 2, 2011

The Way We Live Now


As if we actually needed more media in our lives: a technology startup called Booktrack makes soundtracks for e-books:

To get a sense of what Booktrack does, imagine if the ashram scenes of Eat Pray Love were accompanied by yogic chanting, or if you could hear the wet percussion of harpoons piercing whale flesh as you read Moby Dick.

It would be a perverse accomplishment to make Eat, Pray, Love even more annoying than it already is, and I can't imagine what kind of sicko would want to hear "harpoons piercing whale flesh."

Given that ubiquity of electronically generated sound, it would have been much more original to create smells to enhance the e-reading experience. Imagine taking in the odor of verbena when reading Faulkner, or being steeped in the mingled smells of people who have never bathed in their lives when reading Shakespeare.

2 comments:

Annmarie said...

"It would be a perverse accomplishment to make Eat, Pray, Love even more annoying than it already is,"

Best blog line ever!

3goodrats said...

I agree about Eat, Pray, Love :) And I really hope this idea doesn't take off. I wouldn't even want those sound effects in an AUDIO book, much less a text version!

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