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1993-02-01
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████████████████████████████████
█ THE ELECTRONIC BOOK - UPDATE █
████████████████████████████████
In FORUM #2 I proposed that an electronic book should be
built along the lines of a cigarette pack with a screen. My
original design called for a dual purpose machine--a "disk"
reader combined with a pocket calculator--so that it would be of
maximum use to students. In the two years since that article was
written a number of developments have been made, but computer
builders are still ignoring the huge potential customer base that
students represent.
In the past several years we have seen the introduction of
palmtop computers and electronic book readers like the CD-ROM
products from Sony. Both the palmtops and the various hand-held
CD-ROM readers indicate that there are no major technical
problems involved with the shrinking of a powerful computer into
a small space. However, the available machines do not meet the
needs for an academic electronic book.
The requirements for a student's machine are:
---it must be rugged, as least as rugged as a good quality
pocket calculator,
---it must be cheep. (We're talking CHEEP, which means that
it must be mass produced in huge volumes.)
---it must be easy to use, which means a simple design that
can be used by elementary school students,
---and it must be flexible, that is, capable of running a
variety of types of books.
Some hard disk manufacturers are claiming that their latest
machines are capable of withstanding a 100G shock. If this is
true, then combining that quality of manufacturing with a
"ruggedized" exterior case of pliable (and thus additionally
shock-absorbing) plastic would meet the durability requirements
for student-used machines.
Most palmtop and CD-ROM readers are priced in the $500 to
$600 range. Some are even more expensive. This places them out
of reach for the vast majority of students. For electronic books
to penetrate the classroom, they will have to be cost under $100.
This means that an 80 percent price reduction would be required.
This is not an unrealistic expectation. We have seen the price
of introductory computers fall over 90 percent in less than ten
years. My first computer system cost $2400.00. Although few are
still being manufactured, PC-class computers can now be bought
for a few hundred dollars. For that same $2400 you can now get
over a hundred times the computing power of my ten year old
computer.
Both ease of use and the durability factor mean that the
media must be such that it is not easily damaged by students. My
latest design continues to call for credit-card like media,
however, it is quite possible that "the computer disk" might
evolve along other lines and still have durability. PCMCIA cards
are much in the news lately, and they might represent the future.
[For a complete discussion of the PCMCIA card, see BYTE MAGAZINE,
December 1992, pp237-244.] Also, CD-ROM disks might become the
media of the future. In the past, producing a CD-ROM disk was an
extremely expensive proposition. Now it is only a very expensive
business. (Have at least ten one thousand dollar bills handy if
you want to get into publishing on CD-ROM disks.) If prices of
CD-ROM disk writing equipment follows the price trend for other
computer hardware, then we might be able to expect that machines
"for the rest of us" might be affordable in another five years.
At the present time blank disks are priced at $40.00 each,
exactly what my first box of floppy disks cost ten years ago; a
box of budget floppies now costs less than $2.00.
My objection to the Sony CD-ROM reader and the clones that
are being made by other Japanese electronics firms is that the
books used in these devices are not programmable by ordinary
users. Sony bemoans the fact that it has few titles available.
What do they expect when you have to go through either Sony or
one of their associate firms to make a CD-ROM disk for the
machine. Liberate the CD-ROM disk from the clutches of the
international corporations and you'll have thousands of titles.
Cheep IBM-PC clones allowed millions of people to use computers,
whereas if computers had stayed at the price levels set by IBM,
computers would still be in the hands of only the elite. Look at
Apple computers. For years they were priced beyond the reach of
the majority of potential computer users, and as a result most
people eventually bought IBM-PC clones. The result of this
economic fact can be seen in the availability of shareware
software. There are tens of thousands of shareware programs
available for IBM-PC compatible machines; the amount of Apple
shareware available is not even close. This is because the
inexpensive clones eliminated the financial barriers that users
faced. For a few hundred dollars anyone can become a programmer
for IBM-PC machines; you still need over a thousand dollars to
play in the Apple orchard. The same thing could happen with
electronic books. If we had an inexpensive system for
programming books that could be read on hand-held reader
machines, then there would shortly by an explosion of book
titles. New types of books would also emerge. There would be an
explosion of creativity, but first the economic barriers have to
come down.
My latest electronic book reader design has abandoned the
calculator mode so as to be able to meet the simplicity
requirement. The design includes only keys for scrolling up and
down by either one line of by one screen. It also includes six
function keys which could be used in various ways by electronic
books. They could be used to implement hypertext or interactive
features.
The technology now exists to make such an electronic almost
from off-the-shelf components. The only thing lacking is vision
on the part of computer designers and manufacturers. There
should be someone in this country who can see that there is the
potential to develop a huge and profitable business here. Alas,
we will probably have to wait for some Japanese "Steven Jobs" to
bring something like this out from his garage.
# # #
To see what I envision the electronic book reader to be, run
the E-BOOK program on this disk. Someone out there PLEASE STEAL
THIS DESIGN!
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