It’s an accident: At the gym, on an exercise bike; Jennifer Government on the kindle on the bike’s book rest, iPhone playing the score from The Orange Box.

Just started the chapter where Violet is getting ready to “storm the castle” at the same moment the Team Fortress 2 score begins… And it became the score to the chapter.

It fits beautifully. Full of tension and angst and anticipation… The score & the passage. Together, the image painted in my head was more powerful than any book has ever before evoked.

The Printed Word will morph into the Scored Word. Soundtrack-ing will become part of the typesetting and layout process. And inspired readers will score thier favorites independently and share the resulting iScoreBook mix.

There will be satirical and moving and celestial and techno scores that bring new dimension to the Bible, Catch-22, Gone With the Wind, all of Tom Clancy’s & John Grisham’s books, and articles from Time, Newsweek, People, and The New York Times.

There will be critics of the Scored Word, fighting to keep the imagination pure, and proponents who will argue that they can bring more context than ever to their works, and there will be the masses who simply vote with the use of their headphones.

It is a beautiful future.