It’s time for a roundup of all the posts in this first year of the Tempo book blog and a review of the performance/impact of the book itself. I wrote the book with the expectation that I’d evolve it through multiple editions and spin-off activities over at least a decade, so the book blog has been especially important in my thinking and planning.
This is where I hope to test out ideas to add to future editions, maintain a sort of notebook of ongoing research, and prepare an online home for the book for when the paper book finally becomes a relic.
If the book endures, I expect editions beyond about 2015 to be purely digital, with paper copies being mostly souvenirs. Books seem to be heading inexorably towards continuously-updated-and-versioned digital entities. I predict that beyond the 2nd or 3rd edition, I’ll end up converting the book into a sort of a la carte online thing with mechanisms for readers to keep up with updates and new material. I’ll probably still keep producing paper versions even if there is no real market, because the dead-tree finality of a paper edition serves to enforce a kind of extreme discipline on the writing process.
Anyway, here is a report on the year’s happenings, a preview of 2012, and a list of blog entries for those who want to catch up.