Chris W. wrote:
1) The reading device that I am planing to build will cost $100 or less. Eventually this could drop to $50. Regardless of if I succeed or not, this is bound to happen in the next 10 years
Chris, I hope you succeed, despite the nay sayers (including me of course) on this thread. My concern remains with the trade-offs necessary to get this screen in that price range (i.e., resolution, battery life, color, size, etc.). But this may only be a time concern.
Chris W. wrote:
2) What [I think].. .Bill [meant] was to buy three or four or five such devices to increase your screen area the same way one has several books open...so you can switch each device to a new e-book if you wish. No need to buy dozens of reading devices. I personally think that flexible screens (foldable, rollable) will help to solve the screen size problem. Flexible screens that can be rolled around a pencil exist TODAY. They are not yet commerialized to a point where we see them in off the shelf products, but in a few years we will have them. It is not science fiction to assume that in 10 - 20 years we will have large flexible high resolution screens
It just seems expensive to have to purchase several screens and then not use most of them most of the time, thats all. And it still does not contemplate how real people work by spreading out far more than a half-dozen books when they do research. The idea of a flexible screen sounds promising, but I wonder about integrity of reproduction. Wont there be wrinkles or bends in the screen?
Chris W. wrote:
My friend in Switzerland has developed a fully automatic book scanning machine which can scan in any book in a few minutes. Everything is automated (page turning, scanning, curvature correction, ...). This is a very expensive machine, but some libraries are buying these and are converting hundreds of books every day. I predict that in less than 20 years essentially all historical books will have been scanned. I have no doubt whatsoever. It is already happening. If we can pull together the right people in magic we could digitize the complete magic written record (books and magazines) in three years. There will be more content available than you ever wanted to have. You have my word.
Well I hope youre right! But keep in mind that many historical books are rare books. Do you think that a library will let a machine scan its copy of the Constance Missal from ca. 1444? I tend to doubt that. In addition, there are books which are so fragile (e.g., pulp paper books) that a machine would likely damage them. Also, with all this expensive machinery for efficient scanning, it sounds to me like somebody is going to have to recoup their money at some point. So how much are these scans going to cost? If its the kind of pricing currently charged for e-books, then the hope of selling disks full of books is a pipe dream. I wonder if pricing (especially in a developing market) will be a bigger problem than you anticipate.
Chris W. wrote:
One of his insights is that new technologies do not penetrate a market at the high end, but at the low end. When I apply this to the e-book discussion then I would conclude the following. Most of the argumentation against ebooks is based on a comparison to books. E-book readers don't have a screen that is as good as a book looks. They need batteries and so don't last as long as I can read a paper book, a.s.o. All the arguments we have heard and discussed. And not to draw out the discussion for too long, one can say, yes, e-books in many respects do not match the quality of books. But the point is that that is not necessarily the battle ground. The battle ground is books you currently cannot have, which you could have electronically.
I agree on where the current battleground is, but your hopes for e-books, Chris, are clearly more ambitious than that. In which case, as we move out of e-books as an alternative to no alternative at all, I would think that there would be increasing market resistance to the shortcomings of e-books (real or perceived). And one of my points above was that technology no matter how advanced can only go so far in terms of satisfying the complete range of reasons why people read books.
Chris W. wrote:
In the meantime technology will get better and will slowly start to eat into the regular book market piece by piece, niche by niche. And sooner or later we will find ourself in a situation where books could be limited to the very high end: high glossy large format beautiful books. The Albo books if you wish or the Robert-Houdin books. Nobody argues that e-books will anytime soon challenge these books. I leave this market segment to the book people. Everything else will be digital in my life time.
With all due respect, Chris, if you are saying that within your lifetime, the only way most books will be published is electronically (everything else will be digital), I have a hard time swallowing that one. Moreover, I lament the day when that happens. And Im pretty sure that there are plenty of other Luddites out there who share this feeling (but dont worry, we wont go around smashing up e-readers).
Clay