Why The Net Matters: How the Internet Will Save Civilization is a digital book/iPad app that develops a new kind of way to navigate a non-fiction argument, to zoom in and out on 3D interactive figures, and to navigate with random-access chapters. This is not an iBook, but instead a new species of book. You can pick up Why The Net Matters as an iPad app on the iTunes Store or as an ebook on Amazon.
Why the Net Matters was a finalist for the Digital Book World Innovation Awards.
What's the book about? Why the Net Matters argues that the advent of the internet sidesteps the dangers that brought down previous civilizations. If you'd like a taste of the content, here's a talk I delivered at the Long Now Foundation (For over a week this was the most watched video on fora.tv, and was ranked the #8 technology talk of 2010)
Six Easy Steps to Avert the Collapse of Civilization from The Long Now Foundation on FORA.tv
This thesis about the internet started life as a short piece I wrote in Nature in 2006 about the internet and epidemics, and then fleshed out in a short essay in WIRED and in the book Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?
Here's a demonstration of the app in action:
Please click on the links on the left to read excerpts and see screenshots.