I have seen the future and it is scary...

[mdlbear]

...if you work in a paper-based industry. Sony's new e-ink-based book reader, the LIBRIé (article, with picture, here) is a pointer in the right direction. One of my coworkers brought one back to the lab from Japan. Forget about the facts that it's only available in Japan, costs $400, and has a totally-broken DRM system that makes books evaporate in 60 days. Just look at it!

It is about the size of a paperback book -- the article linked above says "126mm x 190mm x 13mm thick and weighing approximately 190g. The 800 x 600 screen resolution is 6-inches of electronic ink plastic film, capable of displaying four shades of gray." It's lighter and thinner than a paperback. The screen resolution is 170 DPI which, with the anti-aliasing available from the 2-bit pixels, is every bit as readable as a paperback.

OK, move forward a couple of years. There's not much electronics in this thing -- comparable to a high-end calculator, maybe. Nowhere near a mobile phone or a PDA. The screen's expensive because it's brand-new, but it's a simpler and more rugged structure than LCD (in part because the substrate is plastic, not glass). Let's be conservative and assume the same scaling law as hard drives -- a price*performan ce half-life of one year. That puts it at $100 in two years, and $25 in four or five, with an A4-sized unit more like $100 at that point.

At that point, you're looking at something that's a lot cheaper than the stack of paper it would replace, and we're not even factoring in the Sony's added features like bookmarking, marginal notes, and audio. If I worked for a company that publishes text on dead trees right now, I'd be quaking in my boots.

Comments

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Cool, but it's just a fancy display. I'll buy one when it's also a PDA/cellphone. (And MP3 player, and GPS receiver, and...)

[mrlogic.livejournal.com]

I've been wanting something like this for a long time...except that I don't want my books to evaporate in 60 days...

[mdlbear]

It's already an mp3 player -- or would be if Sony's s/w handles mp3's. Maybe it does; the docs are in Japanese.

Personally, I'd settle for just a good display if the price was right (i.e., cheap enough that I could have it and the pocket server -- that's another story).

[mdlbear]

Nobody does, and if nobody comes up with a fix (i.e. a PDF-to-reader translator) soon, some other company will come along with something cheaper and more open.

[pondside.livejournal.com]

Joe Bethancourt hooked us on the Rocket Book REB1100. RCA no longer distributes them but they are available on ebay secondary market - the code to convert html is available and they are wonderful. Baen books has a lot of back issues available free in rb format - and I've got 80 books on my unit and about another 16,000 ready to load when I've finished those. example....
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=14952&item=5701325875&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

Rugged?

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

e-ink quasi-paper will replace paperbacks when readers can

• take them to the beach
  
• read them at the kitchen table
  
• read one poolside
  
• drop one in the bath and have it still function
  
• put one on the bookshelf and have the same satisfaction looking at one e-ink product as at hundreds of books

I don't think regular publishers have to worry that much.

[mdlbear]

The RocketBook is pretty nice; this thing has a far better screen, is much lighter, has batteries that last for 10K pages, and takes a memory stick. There are still a few problems, but it's a big step along the path.

Re: Rugged?

[mdlbear]

There's no reason why you couldn't make one that's hermetically sealed; the display is plastic-based so it's pretty rugged. Being lighter than a book and smaller than a magazine, it would actually be easier to read at the kitchen table than the things I currently read there.

In the short term, magazines and newspapers are in more danger than books. Next to go, a decade or three out, will probably be the mass-market paperbacks. Art books, coffeetable books, and the like will be around for a long time. But the paper-based publishing business is in trouble, and they know it.

[mithriltabby]

I’m very much looking forward to replacing my collection of mass-market paperbacks with digital versions. I know people to whom the physical artifact of a book is valuable, but I just want to read the text. It leaves more room for nifty art objects.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

I'll be there with Captain Picard, reading "Many a quaint and curious volume of half-forgotten lore," those antique leather tomes he reads on the Enterprise (and I read at my place...)

I could see this for newspapers, though. Let's face it, newspapers are big paper-wasters, and you just chuck them at the end of the day (or line the cat box, or use them to catch drips from your painting project). And it wouldn't matter that it evaporates after a while.

[mdlbear]

I have plenty of books I wouldn't really want to give up, but it's less than half the collection. The mass-market paperbacks, the technical books, and most of the magazines are just there for the content. And the mass-market stuff will disintegrate soon, anyway -- some of the books I got from my father's collection are just loose piles of brown pages now.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

I've got more than a few of those loose piles of pages, some even ones I bought back in an early part of my life. Makes you wonder what will happen to the records of the 20th century mass media. Paper deteriorates, data degrades, the Internet content becomes obsolesced on a regular basis...hmm, what will they be trying to find for info of the past 50 years, 200 or 300 years from now.