Today’s posting is a variant on the usual e-reader technology theme, exploring some of the historical alternatives to the traditional printed book, and asking what’s likely to come next.
Ever since writing was invented, people have been seeking different ways to record, share and store information. Cave paintings were replaced by stone and clay tablets. Writing provided a way to represent images and sounds, enabling information to persist beyond it’s creator. The Romans developed a reusable tablet, with wax held in a frame with a stylus to inscribe text, which could be reused by melting the wax. My grandmother remembered using a writing slate and pencil at Primary school. Papyrus, paper and vellum were used to generate readily portable scrolls and later books and folios with the precious information held in a protective binding. A forerunner of e-reader cases perhaps?
Growing up in the UK, there was a TV Program called "Tomorrow's World", featuring products and inventions that (in theory at least) were going to radically change our world, and how we lived. This series introduced the British public to such revelations as the digital watch, the CD and barcode readers. However, as far as I am aware, it never featured a replacement for books, such as an e-reading device.
Why? Replacements for books had already been suggested by entrepreneurs and authors.
Thomas Edison proposed printing on sheets of Nickel, as this would accept ink and could be made cheaply and much thinner than paper.
I remember a story by Isaac Asimov, where children find an ancient book made of paper, and how teaching and learning was predicted to have changed. I read this in the early 1980's - already much of this is superseded!
Microfilm enabled a large volume of text or images to be stored in a small area. However, this required a specialist reader to view the information, and has largely been replaced by digital storage.
Digital storage has the advantage that it can be searched and viewed remotely. If you look to the right of this blog, you will see a ‘widget’ this is a search tool enabling you to look within the DigitalNZ collection, and see what items are held relating to “Embroidery in New Zealand”, one of my other interests.
Audio bookshave been used for years by blind and vision impaired people as well as those who want to be doing something else whilst catching up with the latest bestseller, one of the classics, or whatever takes their fancy.
Conversion of existing text to an audio book has been a costly exercise, limiting the range accessible, and the results are of variable quality. Where content is digitally created, distribution via e-publishing is inexpensive and rapid, compared to printing in a variety of formats and the traditional distribution networks through Bookstores and Libraries.
A relative who works in a UK library provided this anecdote:
"I met a 30 year old partially sighted fantasy fan who had been using talking books as the range of books in large print which interested him was limited. I don't know which type of e-reader he bought but he was able to enlarge the text size and a whole world of books was opened up to him at a greatly reduced cost."
Another alternative has just been publicized - re-writable 'paper', capable of being reused up to 260 times.
Formats are changing as e-reader specifications change. Microsoft has just announced that it is discontinuing it’s Microsoft reader software and bookstore. Sony has discontinued it’s current e-reader range. Amazon has dropped the price of a Kindle 3 to $99 dollars, and the price of a Nook is also falling. Although new releases from these are anticipated, what these will offer is currently unknown.
So will future developments (e.g. affordable tablet computers, erasable e-paper) and patent wars limiting the options for displaying information consign the Kindle et al. to a technological backwater, to keep company with Betamax and the Sinclair C5?
How will we look for (and look at) information? Crystal Ball Anyone?
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