Humour

The un-paper book

T A Balasubramanian on digital books for electronic reading pleasure

We return, once again to the busy arena called the Techno Over-exposition of Geeks and Gizmos for Lazy Enterprises (TOGGLE). In the middle of this hustle and bustle, you, Papyrus Bytewala, CIO of Baffle Corporation, run into an old associate, Nawab Ghoda Ghallstone, Junior. Trotting next to you is Danny DeVito, CTO at Baffle, the first biped walking humanoid.

The nawab, founder and CEO of Ghallstone Labs, is as exuberant and outspoken as ever. He is standing next to a prominent exhibition stall which features a gigantic poster of a scholarly bearded man holding what seems to be a large rectangular tablet that displays an image of a tabloid newspaper with yesterday’s headline and pictures. Splashed above this garish model is a bold caption, ‘Booky Talky’ and under it is a tagline, ‘For Your Electronic Reading Pleasure.’

“Ah, here we are again, Papyrus … and DeVito,” he rumbles, cheery and loud as ever, as he slaps your back and shakes your CTO’s hand. Dressed in a flowing green gown, he has a matching turban with a diamond on the fold. “Gentlemen, get ready to say goodbye to paper. We at Ghallstone are about to usher in the new era of the digital book.”

“Oh, I think we have been hearing about a paperless world now for many decades, nawab,” you say, warily. “And there’s more paper today than ever before.”

“Ah, Papyrus, but this is definitely going to rock the paper boat,” chuckles the nawab, pleased at his own metaphor. “Sure, as you say, the ancient book made from wood pulp shavings hasn’t changed much in 500 years. We have been experimenting with e-books for years but it did not work too well in the market against traditional hard copy—until recently.”

“Who has the time to read lengthy books, anyway, nabob?” says DeVito. “This is the age of 140-character micro-blogging. We have the attention span of butterflies.”

“Maybe so, Danny. We may be like butterflies most of the time, but there are long stories—novels, dissertations, investigations, essays, that demand that we become like snails—crawling very slowly from page to page. Such books are designed to be read with a certain meditative calm and reflection. There are some things that can only be learned from a few hundred pages, as opposed to a few paragraphs in a blog, which is the ridiculous norm we have created because we have been brainwashed into watching too much television and website mush … but I digress,” says the nawab, hastily. “Today, we have an arrangement with the world’s biggest bookshops to bring Booky Talky into your hands, and here you see what we have.”

The nawab hands you a thin white electronic sheet on which you can read the text as if from a crisp newspaper. “You see this 8.5 by 11 inch size makes it a perfect tablet, not only for your daily news, but for all those business documents you keep printing out in reams. And it fits the size of a magazine page unlike other e-books on the market. Yet it’s thinner than a pad of paper, lighter than many business periodicals, and offers a high-quality reading experience—what we have here is a revolutionary little plastic magic sheet that we believe is better than civilization’s ancient tree-derived papyrus—or the bulky electronic readers you may have seen elsewhere.”

“Hmm, nabob. Is it just one page?” says DeVito, frowning.

“No. Of course not—you can turn the pages by just touching this corner. A tap here will bring up for you our handy virtual keyboard—there you are—and a navigation menu. As you observe, the text is crisp and clear—no more soggy paper that crumples in the rain, or flips and flutters crazily in the wind. No ancient hardware to lug around and sprain your wrist. No dust gathering in inaccessible narrow keyboard gaps. No cranky misbehaving buttons that stop functioning after a few hundred pushes.”

“Oh boy, a touchy-feely un-paper. Talk of getting the news at your fingertips! So thin is in, eh, nabob?” says DeVito, holding the slim device gingerly in his hand.

“Ha, ha, Danny. It is the closest thing we have got to the concept of a futuristic digital newspaper. Only 7mm thick, and about the size of a table mat. Smaller form factor is not necessarily convenient or practical for every gadget—specially for a reader, which you’re going to be holding and staring at for hours and hours. That’s why Booky Talky’s notepad size is its strongest selling point. Imagine how much easier it would be to hold and read one of these while sitting on a bus. Then, of course, the usual magazine content will be easier to translate for this little fellow’s dimensions. We think we could even potentially win over die-hard print subscribers because of its more familiar size. You must have seen the other e-readers—the clunky early Jurassic prototypes—such as Swindle—that our competitors are vainly bragging about?”

“Yes,” you say. “I am surprised at their gruesome industrial design, and the keyboards and buttons. They feel like cartons or heavy coffee-table tomes, with angular shapes and sharp edges. This is why I never got one of those.”

“Now you see how slick my Booky Talky is going to be, eh?” grins the nawab, bending the sheet to prove his point. “Many other e-reading devices use a glass backplane, which makes them more fragile. But our e-paper panel itself is entirely flexible—like a rubber sheet—and the plastic construction makes it resistant to scratches and knocks. When you, the reader, immerse yourself in a book, I can tell you that Booky Talky will become ‘invisible’—as what we have here is natural electronic ink technology that looks exactly like dark newsprint.

“As in real printing on paper?”

“Yes. It is really a pigment to avoid giving you eyestrain the way backlit displays do. It lets you read in bright sunlight. It will not beep at you. Nothing takes away the incredibly pleasurable experience of being immersed in a great book. And we know gadgets today are as much a fashion statement as they are service tools. Until readers truly break into the mainstream, you will still look awkward reading off any of these no matter what. But a Booky Talky, in our opinion, will make you look far less weird than something like the boxy Swindle. Although, of course, it may be some time before you get used to seeing people with a flexing LCD in their hands.”

“Get your news hot from a rubber mat, eh? Sounds good, nabob. So what can we read on it?”

“Anything and everything you get on paper now. Business documents, periodicals and books. And a lot that you cannot get at all from paper. For example, it can read out to you.”

“Read out to me?” says DeVito, eyes popping.

“Yes. Just listen to this.”

The nawab presses a virtual button, and a pleasant voice begins to read the content of the page, with an electronic accent.

“Speechless books are a thing of the past, Danny,” laughs the nawab. “Besides, Booky Talky will have wired or wireless connectivity, and you can store and carry around thousands of documents which you could read—or, if you feel lazy, have read out to you—at leisure, but I cannot reveal the type of wireless connection yet. Then there is the battery life—it will be ‘days’ not ‘hours.’ Also, I have no answers about an internet connection—on your next visit, perhaps, we will update you.”

“Keeping it up your sleeve, eh, nabob?”

“Ah, we like to keep some chapters mysterious and exciting for our readers,” grins the nawab.