Today in EPS Insight, a daily
email update produced and distributed by Electronic
Publishing Services, Ltd, David
Worlock discussed a new electronic reading surface.

As David points out, E-book
readers to date are “still clunky…and they create an interface between content
and reader which compels users to focus on the technology… Remove those barriers and give us digital
paper, argue the providers, and we will be re-released to create again the
familiar formats of the Gutenberg world in a digital context.”

And Plastic Logic is working on
the technology that could enable that a 10 inch 150 ppi flexible
active-matrix display which they expect to have in mass production by 2008.

What does that mean?

According to David, “A technology…portable
enough to slip into a briefcase, and which could take downloads from many of
the devices which we currently carry…an equivalent to the paper version at a
satisfactory weight and price.” 

Imagine if we could use
a reader constructed with these pages as a touch screen or with stylus
functions. We could highlight sections
of books, make notes, and perhaps even extract excerpts (with proper citations,
of course!).

Imagine downloading a
book, reading it, making highlights and notes, and then saving it in our
electronic library. The next time we
download it all our notes and highlights are there.

What if that reader
could store portions of our reading list and allow us to cross reference
multiple sources?

Are
books dead?  I don’t think so.  

But this technology
could potentially push us toward a tipping point.

Note: Electronic
Publishing Services (EPS) is an Outsell, Inc. company.

Photographs taken from the Plastic Logic website.