DIY book scanner designs+The godfather of the E-Reader

[kestrell]

This Website and blog has numerous designs for making your own book scanning device
http://www.diybookscanner.org/
(thanks to Jesse the K for the link)
while this NY Times article titled
"The Godfather of the E-Reader"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/books/review/Schuessler-t.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
discusses Bob Brown, who wrote a manifesto for the electronic book reading device titled
The Readies
http://rup.rice.edu/readies.html
back in 1930.

block quote start
Reading Brown’s manifesto, it’s hard not to recognize uncanny preludes to today’s claims that digitization will establish a new utopia of cheap books, downloadable
from even the most obscure library while you’re waiting for the bus. (“The Readies” itself, previously available only to those who could afford one of
the 150 original copies, was reissued last year by Rice University Press, which is now entirely a digital print-on-demand operation.) The machine, Brown
argued, would allow readers to adjust the type size, avoid paper cuts and save trees, all while hastening the day when words could be “recorded directly
on the palpitating ether.”
block quote end

You can read _The Readies_ online here
http://cnx.org/content/m31518/latest/

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Palpitating ether is such an improvement over information superhighway!

[kestrell]

Yes, it has a sort of Victorian/Edwardian ring to it, as if the books are going to begin to talk back in ethereal voices.