Ebooks are great because they don’t take up any physical space and can be brought with you wherever you go. You can also share them with many friends at once, and it also allows for rather interesting experiments such as this one. Dubbed A Universe Explodes, this is an experimental ebook that spans 20 pages and has about 128 words per page.
It sounds like a pretty short story, but here’s the twist: everytime the book is shared, it gets edited which means that only a handful of people actually know what the original story is like. Speaking to WIRED, Tea Uglow, the book’s author and creative director of Google’s Creative Lab in Sydney said, “Frankly, after 20 owners it will be unreadable.”
Why is this? Basically everytime the book is shared, the previous reader is required to remove two words from every page and adding a new one, which is why like we said only a handful of people will know what the original story reads, and by the time it reaches someone else, it could read as an entirely different story.
According to Uglow, the purpose of the book is an experiment in terms of ownership, and what it means to “own” something in the digital age. In any case for those who are interested, you can head on over to its website which is best viewed on mobile devices.
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