Announcing Bookscape
The problem with the internet is that most of our interaction with it involves scrolling through near-infinite lists of non-sequiturs; each post or search result is disconnected from those that come before and after. We consume fragments of information without proper context such as physical geography or intellectual tradition. This fundamental disconnection makes it surprisingly difficult to discover books that resonate with our values or to find like-minded readers in our own communities.
Moreover, when we attempt to sift through all this information by filtering based on 5-star ratings (as on Goodreads), these ratings ignore user demographics and flatten all of human taste into simple averages. It is simply not the case that a middle-aged pastor in Idaho would gravitate towards the same books as a retired female professor in Manhattan or a 25-year-old Indian working at a tech company in Mumbai. Yet current platforms treat all readers as interchangeable, creating recommendations that serve no one particularly well.
Traditional academic institutions, once the guardians of literary culture, struggle to address this fragmentation. As global narratives splinter and local subcultures differentiate, we need new ways for communities to develop their own canons of essential reading. People need to share these curated collections with one another, organizing their understanding of the world in ways that serve their particular families and communities.
Bookscape aims to solve these problems. Very simply, it is a cross between Google Maps and Goodreads that permits users to filter likes, ratings, and content based on demographics. It presents books and authors on an interactive map interface, either superimposed over real geographic regions or arranged in abstract semantic space. This setup helps readers discover overlooked works and revives the experience of wandering through a well-organized library.
The map interface grounds the world of ideas in geographic reality, encouraging more pragmatic and locality-specific discussion. The semantic mapping allows users to start with familiar works and then explore outward through adjacent "content-space," discovering rare gems that might be excellent in spite lacking mass appeal. The demographic filtering and social components allow users with similar interests to find one another and organize informal reading and discussion groups.
Taken together, these features add up to create a nuanced intellectual landscape: a landscape that one can use to discover new ideas and organize subgroups of other users around unique cultural reference points.
