Timeline of Future Reading Innovations

[HarryHutton]

Hey, wondering what your predictions for the future of reading might be - I have a few myself and was wondering if anyone agrees or would like to discuss alternate predictions

Made a timeline below (picture). I doubt everythings in the right place, and I am likely missing some things and including others where they may not happen - but let me know what you think!



Full Size Image


EDIT: image edit

[pidgeon92]

Your image is way too big. If you don't get it within forum guidelines, it's going to be deleted by a moderator.

[Quexos]

I predict smarter, clearer, color e-readers with super batteries that will recharge super fast and last way much longer than they do now, which means that Ipads type of reading tablets might one day totally kill e-ink readers whose strong point is battery life which will become irrelevant when super batteries become available.

[eschwartz]

Yeah, well, they also need to do well in bright sunlight.

Also, battery life will finally become meaningless with the commercialization of the first micro nuclear battery.

[Quexos]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Yeah, well, they also need to do well in bright sunlight.

Also, battery life will finally become meaningless with the commercialization of the first micro nuclear battery.

There are lots of new technologies for batteries that are coming in the near future but nuclear batteries for portable devices are so totally NOT part of it. I assume your post is pure irony but it fails as the batteries I'm speaking of are very real. Read and learn...

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/1303...r-over-the-air

As for reading in bright sunlight, e-readers will indeed keep this advantage but will that very last advantage be enough to sustain a market for future e-readers?

[Alohamora]

Originally Posted by Quexos

There are lots of new technologies for batteries that are coming in the near future but nuclear batteries for portable devices are so totally NOT part of it. I assume your post is pure irony but it fails as the batteries I'm speaking of are very real. Read and learn...

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/1303...r-over-the-air

thanks for the link.

Just imagine that flat flexible battery combined with a flexible screen. The re-birth of the scroll could be coming?

[DuaneAA]

A mere ten years ago the general public wasn't using things like smartphones or tablets or e-ink readers. Then, over a very short two or three year time period, it seemed like almost everyone had one. I think over the next ten years we will see equally radical changes to how we interface with information and that your chart, which only assumes minor tweaks to the current state-of-the-art, is too pessimistic.

We are starting to see the first attempts at the next generation via things like google glasses, head-mounted VR displays, and smart watches. I think about ten years from now they will have progressed to the point where another major shift will occur and most of us will interface to things via a watch-sized central processor/wireless interface, a pair of earbuds, and a small wire-sized fiber optic device capable of beaming very high resolution images directly onto the rods and cones on the back of the eyes. At that point this fiber optic device will be discretely hidden in the frame of glasses, but they will be close to having it operational within contact lenses.

With those kinds of devices available, large smartphones/tablets will be fading away or only used in niche applications.

On the software side, I think this recent article portends a major disruption:

http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/16/c...-announcement/

It is all about a toy, but I think this, in combination with continued improvements in things like Siri and Cortina, indicate we are getting close to useful personal AI assistants. I think within the ten year time frame of the chart shown, this will change how we interact with information as much or more than how smartphones/tablets have changed things over the last ten years.

Each of us will have our own personalized version of Siri or Cortina, which we will mostly interact with via talking. Most of us will have given it a name, and for a small monthly fee, it will talk to us using the voice of our favorite celebrity. In the same way Netflix has already learned what movies and TV shows I like and don't like and generally makes useful recommendations for things I've never seen, our personal assistants will know our likes and dislikes for books and everything else since it will have access to everything we do on the internet. For books, it will either read them to you aloud like the audiobooks of today using distinct, interesting voices for each character or display them through the fiber optic connection.

We are well into the 21st century and everything is changing at an exponentially increasing rate. I think ten years from now, how we interface with things will be very different in the same way I would never have guessed ten years ago that my now 78 year old Mother would spend hours every day using a device like the Ipad.

Duane

[fjtorres]

I seriously doubt that tablets will kill laptops.
Historically, it is the higher functionality device that marginalizes and/or subsumes the functions of the lesser. (Connected organizers and media players becoming smartphone features, dedicated word processors getting replaced by software on PCs... examples abound.)

As of 2014, tablet sales are flat or declining and laptop PCs are growing again. And robustly, if you include Chromebooks and convertibles.

The way I see the winds blowing, touchscreen laptops and convertible laptops are going to cap tablet growth at the high end starting this year--effectively foreclosing the corporate and educational markets to tablets--and over the next five years they will erode the consumer market for higher end tablets. It will become increasingly hard to get consumers to fork out over $300 for tablets and most non-Apple tablets will be forced to play in the sub-$200 arena, leading to a massive die-off.

The calling card of tablets is the combination of portability and "daylong" battery life, both of which are being matched by current laptop hybrid laptop designs. This will force most tablet vendors out of the market and very soon.

[murg]

Tablet hardware will also reach parity soon, the point at which additional grunt doesn't buy you as much as it costs. Then the low end tablets will have all the grunt they need, and as for the high end tablets...well, the Apple people will continue to shell-out for each new release...

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

I seriously doubt that tablets will kill laptops.

They serve different purposes.

A tablet is primarily a content consumption device; a laptop is primarily a data entry device. I wouldn't want to write a novel on a tablet, just as I wouldn't want to read a novel on a laptop.

I think, though, that hybrid devices have real potential. Although my Microsoft Surface Pro with its detachable keyboard isn't my main work computer, it's perfectly adequate (and I extensively use it) for tasks that involve more data entry than I'd find comfortable on a pure tablet, such as for writing email while I'm away on holiday.

So I agree with you: tablets will not kill laptops, but the hybrid market will, I think, grow.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by murg

Tablet hardware will also reach parity soon, the point at which additional grunt doesn't buy you as much as it costs. Then the low end tablets will have all the grunt they need, and as for the high end tablets...well, the Apple people will continue to shell-out for each new release...

Most of the cost in tablets is the screen and battery to drive the screen.
That will drive the players that remain to the smaller sizes and at those sizes phablets are going to be very attractive.

Conversely, at the high end, keyboards don't add much cost and with the recent acceptability of chiclet keyboards they won't add much weight either.

I'm keeping an eye on the Asus T100 and new Dell Venue 10Pro. Especially the latter: Core M cpu and pen support at Android/Atom prices and weight. The pen in particular buys a lot of added functionality.

[rollei]

Think there are e-ink phones now but they are not widely available yet.

[treadlightly]

I don't understand the focus on foldable and flexible eInk devices. Unbreakable, yes certainly.

[murg]

Originally Posted by treadlightly

I don't understand the focus on foldable and flexible eInk devices. Unbreakable, yes certainly.

The package to be carried is smaller than the screen to be read. Sort of like folding up a piece of paper to put in your wallet.

[murg]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Most of the cost in tablets is the screen and battery to drive the screen.

And screens and batteries will reach parity also. The only real frontier is power consumption.