There’s been a lot of talk about the future of printed media lately. Printed newspapers are on the verge of collapse and even the most lauded news organizations are trying to figure out a way to make money online as their print revenue vanishes. On August 3rd, USA Today is launching an electronic version of their newspaper, which will be a digital replica of the print product, albeit with additional interactive and exclusive content — including video.
Along with reinvisioning the idea of newspapers, the book industry is undergoing a dramatic metamorphosis, with mixed reviews from consumers. The second version of Amazon’s Kindle wireless reading device was released in February, with over 300,000 sales already. Some consumers love the e-reading tablet…the Kindle store boasts about 1500 5-star customer reviews, with comments about how clean and functional it is. Novelist Nicholson Baker devotes 6,219 words to the subject in a recent article for the New Yorker and the one and only esteemed product endorser, Oprah Winfrey, has declared the gadget “life changing” and the “wave of the future.” Not bad for a $299 electronic gadget in a world recession. Some avid readers (myself maybe included), however, are a bit wary of the “exceptional reading experience” Amazon bills its Kindle as. It seems hard to fathom that interacting with an electronic tablet can give a book lover the same experience as browsing through a dimly lit used bookstore and returning home to curl up with a dogeared paperback and a cup of coffee. The former can’t actually beat out the latter in a battle of the book experience, can it? (Keep in mind I’m severely biased.)
There may be an answer that allows the future of the book to keep evolving while appeasing paperphiles (?) like me at the same time. A different article in the New Yorker discusses the future of reading and questions if the choice between print and digital is really as stark as we think it is. Two organizations are working on two very different but equally intriguing solutions that combine aspects of both mediums. Editis, a French publishing group, offers a vision of a sleek digital future populated with elegant book-shaped readers (as opposed to the tablet format of the Kindle) with touch technology. The video below offers a peek as to what this could look like. Skip ahead to the 3 minute mark…a 9 minute video in French was only able to hold my attention for so long.
Possible ou Probable
The other project featured that I found fascinating combines actual paper with the ease of digital technology. Fluid Interfaces, a research group at the M.I.T. Media Lab, is working on a project called “Pulp-Based Computing: A Framework for Building Computers Out of Paper.” Their website describes it as:
Pulp-Based Computing is a series of explorations that combine smart materials, papermaking, and printing. By integrating electrically active inks and fibers during the papermaking process, it is possible to create sensors and actuators that behave, look, and feel like paper. These composite materials not only leverage the physical and tactile qualities of paper, but can also convey digital information, spawning new and unexpected application domains in ubiquitous and pervasive computing at extremely affordable costs.
People can react with these pulp-based computers as they would with ordinary paper — it’s capable of being folded, written upon, or even ripped up. A makeup company in Japan is using electronic paper in a train advertisement for mascara. The paper poster is currently limited to strictly black and white images but an advantage of electronic paper is that the images can be updated remotely, allowing new advertisements to be installed without physically replacing the paper. Jean-Baptiste Labrune of the University of Paris-Sud in Orsay, France, says pulp-based computing could be useful. “Paper-based computation is an expression of one future area for electronics – flexible and stretchable circuits. This means that we could think about computational objects without the traditional limits of electronics.”
Can you have your e-book and touch it, too? The potential future capabilities this technology could have are fascinating.
Article By: Megan Weisenberger