I think the reader would have to support animation to browse through large displays and HTML navigation to reach said papers. The only two ways that immediately pop up to mind, where papers could be used on a small screen are first: having a paper that can reformat itself, or second an Apple iPhone type of display that allows you to move about a big page and blow it up to make it legible.
Neither of those can be done on the reader and if they could, the power management advantage would be lost. The Sony reader was intended for books only and I'm afraid it will remain so.
Today's eink displays are pretty much like the first LCD watches of lore. Who knew then that LCD would have supported colo(u)r and better still, animation.
We will have to bite down and wait a good while again for the better iterations of eink that will birth that famous 'sec tablet'.
