The dream of the electronic depository library dates back to at least the 1950s — and arguablymuch before ! But it was n’t until the eighties and 90s that our ebook dreams slowly became a high - tech realness .
The electronic book has had quite a steady hike here in the former 21st century . Roughly 50 percent of Americans now own either a tablet or an east - proofreader ( 42 percent have a tablet , and 32 percent have an eastward - reader ) . But it took quite a turn of tinkering — not to mention merchandising — to make them mainstream .
Below we have a handful of predictions from the eighties and 90 about the time to come of the ebook and the various readers we ’d be using to consume them .
1) Ebooks on CD
From the 1989 Bible Future Stuff by Malcolm Abrams and Harriet Bernstein :
Do you make out cozying up with a dear book ? Well , test cozying up with five hundred at a clock time !
This is the electronic book . The immense storehouse capacity is brought to you by CD - ROM , the floppy disk with room to spare . A specially designed small figurer social unit with a detachable show panel make up the computer hardware . The software program is just plastic , indestructible certificate of deposit , with a content for five hundred manuscripts on each one . The display instrument panel weigh only 5 pound , and is roughly the size of a effectual notepad ( 7 inches by 14 inches by 2 inches ) . A 15 - foot cord attaches it to the similarly small basis unit , and a touch - raw blind makes it work . The viewing arena is 10 by 6 inches .
But it was n’t going to be brassy :
If you ’re thinking of putting your whole library onto disk and using the bulwark space for a Rembrandt , you ’re out of luck . The cost of making your own disc could be as much as $ 1,500 ( but to raise a duplicate of it will run only $ 2.50 ) . You also could have some problems with publication right . remember of this more in term of buying records . They derive permanently engraved , are non - effaceable , and they ’ll in all probability have your preferred author ’s “ greatest hit ” by the sentence you ’re quick to corrupt the unit .
2) Imagine holding 10 books in the palm of your hand
From the October 24 , 1998 Associated Press :
think holding 10 books in the palm tree of your hand — and being able to read them in the dark .
That ’s the idea behind and electronic book unveiled Friday .
Once the hooey of skill fiction , Rocket eBook jam 4,000 pages of text and graphics — or about 10 medium novel — into a paperback - size , 22 - Panthera uncia gimmick that sells for $ 499 .
The eastward - reader was also going to make interpretation in the dark much easier :
“ It ’s hard to replace suffer well-fixed on the animation room sofa with a paperback , ” [ the CEO of Nuvo Media ] said . But when I get into bed , and my wife says , “ The light ’s going off , dude ! — I can tun on the electronic book . ”
3) Ebooks and readers must first be standardized
One concern about the electronic books of the future was the matter of standardization . And arguably , we still have n’t forecast that one out . In 1993 , the Associated Press used the car as an exercise of a technology that was eventually standardized .
Under the newspaper headline “ Electronic Word could smart bookstore concern , ” the November 23 , 1993 publication of the Hutchinson News :
Just as the introduction of the motorcar heralded the remnant of the buggy whip industry , the coming of electronic Quran could eventually make a big dent in the bookshelf business .
Electronic record book are stored on 3- to 5 - column inch discs . Some of these magnetic disk are capable of storing up to 100,000 pages of school text and illustrations . One platter now being betray contains all the Sherlock Holmes stories , the complete whole kit of Shakespeare and the novel “ War and Peace . ” With this sort of capacity , it is leisurely to envision whole libraries being hive away on one shelf no more than a few ft wide .
But the bookshelf makers should n’t put away their hammers and nails just yet , according to Video Magazine . In the commencement , car were invent in a puzzling raiment of types and varieties , and it take for a while for the 400 or so car producer existing at the turn of the century to be whittled down to those cook up the four - wheeled , throttle - powered buggies we know today .
The sam affair is happening with electronic book . These tomes of the future are now being published in more than 20 incompatible formats , which are “ read ” by equally out or keeping electronic book players .
The job with the AP ’s analogy is that it discount DRM . Back at the turn of the twentieth hundred it did n’t matter if your car was electric , a steam locomotive , or gas - powered — they all could drive on the same roads . This is n’t true for books . If I buy a book for my Kindle with Amazon - specific lock I ca n’t then transfer that Scripture to out or keeping atomic number 99 - readers and show it there . Seems like we still have a ways to go with this one .
4) Ebooks will be great for the environment
In the other nineties most people had never advert something approximating an e - reader . But that did n’t dampen agitation for what was to come — especially since they auspicate it would be cracking for the environment .
From the May 18 , 1992 Paris News in Texas :
In the competitory publishing market , utilizing this novel engineering would facilitate solve major job of statistical distribution , impression , storage , inventory control condition and invoice management . And surely there would be Brobdingnagian environmental savings in bear on millions of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree .
In today ’s economic context , the need for public and pedantic libraries to establish Bookbank machines is also obvious . They would save enormous infinite in book repositing , and the shared collection benefits would be boundlessly more cost effective and advantageous to participating libraries .
Still , if a a challenge to hug the electronic book concept when I have n’t yet embraced an electronic book ! Although I look onward to doing so because there are so many exciting features ! My future power Christian Bible would exhibit the text on clear blanched pages that replicate the design of a hardback , it would have a backlit screen to permit reading in miserable illumination , and the choice to enlarge the eccentric to reduce asthenopia . It could also read to me but gimcrack , toy music , provide glorious illustration in full color , wrick , the Sir Frederick Handley Page , seize an electronic paper clip to keep my place , search for chapter bearing , underscore a transition , and allow me to make musical note in the margins . Of of course , utilizing adapter , I could also publish out individual varlet and find out my videos on it .
5) In the future, paper books will merely be art
The December 1 , 1998 New York Times augur that just because ebooks would soon be invading our plate did n’t mean that the traditional book was completely disappear :
With futurologists having mistakenly presage the oddment of the printed Sir Frederick Handley Page for several decades now , no one is preparing a eulogy for the traditional book of account . telly did not doom radio , video did not drink down film , and electronic publishing will not likely end mark .
But with two electronic book twist on the market and an exponential increase in reference and scholarly material useable online , many experts say that the transformation from page to screen , once a Jetson - like phantasy , is now approaching realism .
And there are those , like Jeff Rothenberg , a senior computer scientist at the Rand Corp. , who say they can see the day when books printed on paper will be watch “ more as objets d’art than thing we use all the time . ”
It stay on to be seen whether we ’re still in a transitional stagecoach for longform media or whether this is plainly the new normal — a intelligent mixture of both print and digital pulmonary tuberculosis . Until ebook publishers figure out more sensible DRM restrictions or those most concerned withowning their mediasimply go out ( read : old people like myself ) it seems deadtree medium will still have a place in the longform landscape .
Image : Jeff Bezos in 2007 introducing the Kindle via the Associated Press
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