A Guardian of Content in the Digital Transition

Josh Koppel is hijacking one of the most controversial spaces in the digital realm: the e- book. When he last spoke at the BIF-2 Summit in 2006, he reported on the complexities of bringing liner notes to iTunes. It was an endeavor that didn’t exactly work out the way he had hoped.

Nevertheless, it was a “transitional moment” in his life when he realized that the way to succeed with mobile applications is to bring them directly to the device.

Koppel’s company, ScrollMotion, is currently the largest developer of apps for the iPhone. ScrollMotion has partnered with major publishers and entertainment companies to push the limits of what is possible on a small digital screen. The iPhone can display vast amounts of information that even the thickest textbooks cannot accommodate.

“When you reduce the need for physical space, you can give things the space and attention they deserve,” Koppel explains.

Despite the huge potential lying in a small digital screen, user acceptance is an ongoing challenge.

Digital reading has raised questions among scholars and cultural critics about the way the Internet affects our capacity to concentrate. The interactive textual experience created by hyperlinks and chat, they say, create distractions that are rewiring brain pathways that took thousands of years to evolve.

“I think that’s hysteria,” Koppel says. “The scientific discoveries that are happening now are happening at a rate that has never been matched in human history. This century has changed the landscape of the world more than any other century. From 1900 to 2000, we saw that man could fly—first in the stratosphere and then in space. We went from buggies to cars. I feel like that’s what humans do. They continue to push forward the boundaries of what we know, what we can do.”

On the other hand, Koppel acknowledges that change, no matter how well-intentioned, can bring negative outcomes. For that reason, he says, we must take accountability for shaping the future we desire.

“The only way to see things in the world the right way—the way that you want to see them—is to build them yourself,” he says.

The trick is to translate one’s personal vision into something that others can readily absorb, to find the prototyping tools that people understand. People will carry the libraries of the world in their pockets only if it can be done with a tool that makes sense to them. Herein lies Koppel’s strength.

“I figured out a way to prototype on an iPod,” he says. “That’s my secret. I tinker. I play with stuff.”

The stuff he plays with now includes apps for major textbook publishers like McGraw Hill and for children books such as the Curious George series. Koppel is also the mastermind behind bringing the Tribune newspapers and several consumer magazines like Esquire and People to the iPhone.

This is only the beginning.

“The iPad and the iPhone are just the first in a class of social devices that treat media as a collective experience,” Koppel says. Even reading a book can become a more social activity if we can click on a passage and send it to a friend or chat about it with a group of like-minded readers.

Enabling content to live across a variety of media can enhance our user experience in ways we have yet to discover. But at the same time, Koppel says, some unique aspects of both content and media could be lost if we are not watchful, sensitive guardians.

“What is the best way for content to live in these new devices?” he asks. “How do you make sure that what is beautiful and wonderful about media is not lost or degraded to an experience that makes it lame?”

By “lame,” he means “undynamic.” It’s easy to put bland words on a screen to mimic the physical appearance of a book. But our digital, connected culture is clamoring for something more.

The biggest challenge now, according to Koppel, is to change the notion of what content is—to convince users that it is worth paying for. He predicts that all content will be sold one more time as it moves to the digital realm. With ScrollMotion, he is working to ease the full transition to digital media that he sees as clearly inevitable:

“Whether digital will happen or not is not up to us,” he says. “It not a choice—this is happening. We have to support it by being critical, but also by staying engaged in the dialogue and still trying to push it forward.

“There is no going back. There is no regression for culture.”