I sometimes ponder what I would like my personal library to look like, in my future dream house. Lots of books, of course, and a few easy chairs. Nice woodwork. But a growing part of my library is ebooks, and how do you put ebooks where you can browse the spines, or pull books out at random to look at their covers? One of the things I like to do in my SF collection is to once in a while just look at the covers, and build a kind of gestalt feeling of all those wonderful stories gathered in one place.
So here’s my plan. Along with all those paper books, I’ll have a digital frame displaying a slideshow of the covers for all my ebooks. Understand, that’s a stopgap measure, until the technology catches up with what I really want—a holographic display of the book images, arrayed sort of the way iTunes displays album covers when you’re running a playlist. You’d be able to flip through the display with your fingertips, and if you find one you want to read right then, just pull it out of the holo. Sort of like this display at coverpop.com, only in full-sized full-holo. That action will cause the book to download, if necessary, into whatever magnificent reading device is current then, and open for reading. Sans dust mites.
The best of both worlds.
substandardTim
While I have some eBooks, I lament the day that printed books finally disappear. However far off that day may yet be.
Fiction is one thing, but putting our trust in history books and other non-fiction in a very changeable and politically corruptable form is quite another. Digital truth is relative truth.
nta
There is a lot of research being done on methods to ensure that electronic documents are not tampered with and/or degraded due to bit rot. I think it is easily possible to guarantee that specific documents have not been altered, but we are well on the path toward digital records without such a system in place.
Anonymous
Hey Jeff,
Doug Blaisdell here. Haha, I bet you didn't expect that. I walked past our old haunt today, 10 Hancock Pl, for an historical laugh. Look rather dingy and rundown.
I live in Berlin, Germany, with my German gf, where everything sparkles with cleanliness (except me), but spend most of the year in SE Asia (Thailand and Indonesia).
Send me some email if you want to get together before I blow town (doug.blaisdell@gmail.com). I'm only around for a few weeks, seeing my boys, and I'll be in NYC part of the time.
cheers,
doug
Jeffrey A. Carver
Hey Doug! Good to hear from you! What's it been, twenty-some years? I'll send you an email.