E-Readers promise a flexible future
By Nick Bilton (The New York Times)
Updated: 2010-08-09 10:07
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| Developers are working on bendable digital readers that could be carried in a pocket - or on the battlefield. Phillip Spears / Arizona State University Flexible Display Center |
Today, digital readers are much cheaper and come with significantly better displays and storage space. But things are just getting started - like the price war that erupted in June between Amazon and Barnes & Noble that has since pushed the prices of their e-readers to as low as $139. Those e-readers are also facing challenges from other gadgets that can display books, newspapers and magazines, including mobile phones and the new tablet computers like the iPad. Apple says it has sold 3.3 million iPads since introducing it in April.
"The paper book is dead," says the digital visionary Nicholas Negroponte.
Mr. Negroponte runs a nonprofit group that hopes to put inexpensive computers in the hands of millions of impoverished children around the globe. Its efforts helped push the commercial development of the popular netbook, or cheap small laptops. He thinks that the price of e-readers eventually will fall to $50 and perhaps even $20.
Mr. Negroponte's group, One Laptop Per Child, has developed a slate computer to be released in 2012 that will cost less than $100. Plastic and unbreakable, it will resemble the iPad and will "use so little power you should be able to shake it or wind it up to give it power," he said.
Some developers envision tablet computers so flexible that you will be able to roll them up and slip them in your bag or pocket.
Clive Thompson, a technology writer and columnist for Wired magazine, said that if "publishers are smart - and readers lucky" the content of e-books will be more open and collaborative.
"You'll be able to cut, paste and exchange your favorite passages, using them in the same promiscuous way we now use online text and video to argue, think or express how we're feeling," Mr. Thompson said.
In other words, e-books will become social experiences, with readers able to see the most popular passages as others highlight and comment in real time.
"E-books will display their social and informational life," Mr. Thompson said.