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Re: Books in the future
Posted By: BurgerKing, on host 142.177.96.112
Date: Thursday, April 20, 2000, at 21:09:02
In Reply To: Re: Books in the future posted by Kaz! on Thursday, April 20, 2000, at 11:27:47:

> So, to sum up, a future text reader would have to be superior to one that we use today. It would consume almost no energy, be easy to browse through so that you can peek at the end without holding down on the down key and without losing your place, it would be small enough to fit in your pocket but large enough to hold comfortably, it would have no wires and would not need to be set up, and it would be durable to withstand heat, cold, or even pounding with a hammer. Such a device sounds fantastic, and you may think it will not be invented for centuries.
>
> However, such a device already exists. It was discovered by the ancients thousands of years ago. It is -- and some of you are probably already ahead of me -- called the "book".
>
> -Ka"It's so inconvenient to read e-texts in bed!"z!

Of course, there may, sooner or later, be the technology to combine the two forms of media. "Electronic ink" has been developed, which basically involves a liquid that can be pressed over almost any surface, and whose grid can stimulated by an relatively small electric field to switch between two colors (so far) when controlled by a computer. Developing a smaller required surface width is part of one of the goals of the company currently researching and producing the product, E INK: to produce a book using electronic ink. It would take less electricity to run than a monitor, and would probably only require one piece of paper, or plastic, to view more pages of text pages of text that could be reasonably contained within one regular volume, using the necessary storage and navigation device. This book which would be able to download text from various electronic sources, such as the internet, to combine a portable and less eye-strain inducing method of viewing long documents with the accessablity of digital information. Imagine eventually navigating the internet with a piece of paper for a monitor. Of course, so far the technology has been used only in advertising banners, so there's a long way to go.

Here's the information site for the company.

Burger"Are e-ink tattoos far behind?"King


Link: What is E Ink?