Quote:
Originally Posted by ZodWallop
A device like that sounds terrible and I hope it never comes to fruition. At least crap books can be pulped. But millions of disposable e-readers holding Fifty Shades of Gray clogging up a landfill would be a disaster.
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No need to worry.
On Star Trek Next Generation they had that kind of document carrier.
(Andromeda, too.)
They were erasable and reusable.
Essentially a physical form of PDF digital paper.
They are actually feasible and would be cheaper to build than a hardcover. (Think of the supercheap dollar store calculators.) The biggest cost is the screen but OLED tech has the potential to be printed at extremely low cost. (Index card cheap.) It'll take another decade or two but they can be built.
The only problem is that ram chips don't come in single ebook sizes anymore and a screen that can display one book can display thousands. It costs no more to build a hundred ebook reader than a single book reader. The 80's STNG digital paper vision belongs in the 80's along with other skeuomorphic concepts like MS BOB.
By the time disposable readers can be built and make economic sense they won't be needed. People willing to read on ereaders want full libraries in their hands not a hundred hunks of plastic cluttering the house. And they wouldn't even smell like proper books, anyway.
The proper evolution of the book is ebooks, not digital paper.
That ship has sailed.