“I’m like the Kindle but I’m not going to buy it. I’m going to wait until it can hook up with the library system.”
What do you think of that? I was kind of blown away.
At any rate, I like Jaap’s idea of libraries developing our own eInk device. If we *really* want to ready ourselves for the future, why are we going to wait for the market to produce a device that we’ll have to shoehorn into usual way of doing things? It would be fantastic if libraries developed a great, free (as in speech) device. I know that librarians are capable of developing a device that everyone will want. Dewey invented the vertical filing cabinet (according to Gladwell but not wikipedia), right? How would we get publishers to work with us? Dunno. Barcode authentication to databases on an ebook would be neat, but would it add value over using a laptop? Not sure.
Whatever the case may be, we can ensure our viability in the future by creating the future ourselves.
Yeah, I know, paper is an amazing technology, and books are really useful. They’ll be gone some day though. We’ll all likely be worm food when that day comes, but it’ll happen nonetheless. Now the world is one step closer.
Spending hours reading the papers may be an ideal pastime on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
But what if your newspaper updated itself during the day? What if the pictures moved and the interviews could be listened to?
In Belgium, this is coming true – at least for a three-month trial period. The Antwerp-based daily De Tijd will soon become the world’s first newspaper to publish a digital version on so-called ‘electronic paper’.
Those lucky Belgians will now get to eat great waffles and have eInk newspapers! Here’s the full article: Belgian newspaper to become first ‘paperless’ daily. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that there’s going to be a revolution and newspapers are going to stop their presses soon. I’m just saying that this is a step in the evolutionary process.
One of my favorite essays about paper is The Social Life of Paper by (a way pre-Blink) Malcolm Gladwell. If you missed it in 2002, give it a read. There is even a great bit about Melvil Dewey in the article.
