“I was recently reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book, and I got three chapters in and I lost interest,” he said. Bilton would also like to look at analytics to see when people get bored and stop reading his book. He’s also thinking about offering full transcripts of his interviews, research papers and notes online so they can consume the raw “data” of his book-writing process. And at the end of chapters, he’ll include a number, which they can text message to view a video interview on their mobile phone while they’re reading the book. He also wants to include a summary before each chapter, so readers can choose whether or not to read on or flip ahead. Snippets of those videos will be teased out on his Web site. “I’m like Edward Scissorhands with buttons,” he said. Bilton, who shows up with video cameras, a digital photo camera, an iPhone, a laptop, as well as a notepad and voice recorder. “I look like a raving lunatic when I go into interviews,” said Mr. He’s shooting videos of all of his interviews, which include brain researchers, porn industry mavens and new media icons including Clay Shirky and Arianna Huffington. Bilton aims to satisfy this new breed of readers by offering a “ platform agnostic” buffet of content. “If we’re really interested, we go off and we look for more content which is the meal.” Reading the actual article is the “snack experience,” Mr. But now we get “bite-sized” previews on blogs or from a friend sending us a link with their own commentary.

“We used to go and we’d only have one option of how we could read an article,” he told the Observer, referring to hefty blocks of text. Bilton will examine how the Web has rewired our brains and made users, which he calls “consumivores,” crave different forms of content. “You could start reading something on your mobile phone and finish reading it on your computer when you get home, and later on the day, you can watch the videos that are associated with it on your television,” is how he described it.įor his book, Mr. “It’s this idea that your content follows you around between your devices,” Mr.

He’s behind all kinds of futuristic projects–like Times Reader, a digital, e-reader friendly format of the news, and a project called CustomTimes, an intuitive program that seamlessly juggles content between phones, computers and even the living room. He tinkers with mobile e-readers, new software and even sensors to envision how we’re all going to be reading the “paper” a decade from now. Bilton is one of the Times‘ lead research and development thinkers. “And when I go back, I’ll have much broader knowledge about where the industry is going to be.” It’s relevant to the whole industry,” he told the Observer last week. “The Times is having a tough time and for me to go off and do this book, it took some convincing, but I think they saw the importance in a project like this.

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