finger sweep
Have you noticed how the hand-held reading devices are scrolling off the black e-ink screen as the LED color screen encroaches from below? Finger sweeps have already flicked off the keyboard that was the vestige of analog automation. Soon these readers will be next generation color screens streaming from the cloud.
The connected hand-held reader wants to be something else and not a book. It could be that the construct of the book is tied to the constraints of paper. Absent such constraint the connected screen, search parsing and wiki volatility could dissolve the bibliographic unit.
low-cost sunlight readable hand-held device delivery of full color books in the cloud
Liquavista was well received at the Consumer Electronics Show and many other hand-held devices suitable for book reading have emerged. I still like my idea that there may eventually be as many devices as book titles. This would not resolve their display format incompatibilities but it would provide a richness of literature itself.
A useful suggestion is to identify e-readers by their format and not by their simple contrast to print. This would classify those that are open-source e-Pub readers, PDF displayers, DRM publisher displayers and/or retailer portals.
The only way to focus in this vortex is to narrow your view, and here at FotB we remain focused on device simulation of print and the continuing role of print in a context of its screen simulation. Can we stay on course as consumer electronics goes nuts over reading devices? Stay tuned.
“Amid a crowd of promising new electronic readers at CES, this one stood out. This software application, built in part by futurist-inventor Ray Kurzweil, turns almost any laptop, netbook or smartphone into an image-rich, full-color electronic reader. Blio uses publishers’ original PDF files to preserve the exact format of books and magazines while supporting interactive multimedia, including video and Web links. It will launch with an online store featuring more than 1.2 million titles. Best of all: It’s free.” CNN
Blio begins to look like the screen equivalent of print-on-demand. It is a second life for books with a familiar, accentuated landscape. As for the side-step of the physical, we can disregard that, for the moment.
midwinter
I am off to Boston for Mid-Winter ALA. ALA is the place to be. It is there that the destiny of books is being hammered out. And that future of books is the ultimate library preservation issue. Go to AIC to avoid this.
Randy Roeder’s guest editorial in LRTS prompts the destiny of cataloging and the issue of the persistence of bibliographic entities in a context of parsing of each word and phrase ever composed. Here is another ALA indication of book futures. Myself, I still see researchers composing books, but catalogers see them composing searches.