лллллллллллллллллллллллллллллллл л THE ELECTRONIC BOOK - UPDATE л лллллллллллллллллллллллллллллллл In FORUM #2 I proposed that an electronic book should be built along the lines of a cigarette pack with a screen. My original design called for a dual purpose machine--a "disk" reader combined with a pocket calculator--so that it would be of maximum use to students. In the two years since that article was written a number of developments have been made, but computer builders are still ignoring the huge potential customer base that students represent. In the past several years we have seen the introduction of palmtop computers and electronic book readers like the CD-ROM products from Sony. Both the palmtops and the various hand-held CD-ROM readers indicate that there are no major technical problems involved with the shrinking of a powerful computer into a small space. However, the available machines do not meet the needs for an academic electronic book. The requirements for a student's machine are: ---it must be rugged, as least as rugged as a good quality pocket calculator, ---it must be cheep. (We're talking CHEEP, which means that it must be mass produced in huge volumes.) ---it must be easy to use, which means a simple design that can be used by elementary school students, ---and it must be flexible, that is, capable of running a variety of types of books. Some hard disk manufacturers are claiming that their latest machines are capable of withstanding a 100G shock. If this is true, then combining that quality of manufacturing with a "ruggedized" exterior case of pliable (and thus additionally shock-absorbing) plastic would meet the durability requirements for student-used machines. Most palmtop and CD-ROM readers are priced in the $500 to $600 range. Some are even more expensive. This places them out of reach for the vast majority of students. For electronic books to penetrate the classroom, they will have to be cost under $100. This means that an 80 percent price reduction would be required. This is not an unrealistic expectation. We have seen the price of introductory computers fall over 90 percent in less than ten years. My first computer system cost $2400.00. Although few are still being manufactured, PC-class computers can now be bought for a few hundred dollars. For that same $2400 you can now get over a hundred times the computing power of my ten year old computer. Both ease of use and the durability factor mean that the media must be such that it is not easily damaged by students. My latest design continues to call for credit-card like media, however, it is quite possible that "the computer disk" might evolve along other lines and still have durability. PCMCIA cards are much in the news lately, and they might represent the future. [For a complete discussion of the PCMCIA card, see BYTE MAGAZINE, December 1992, pp237-244.] Also, CD-ROM disks might become the media of the future. In the past, producing a CD-ROM disk was an extremely expensive proposition. Now it is only a very expensive business. (Have at least ten one thousand dollar bills handy if you want to get into publishing on CD-ROM disks.) If prices of CD-ROM disk writing equipment follows the price trend for other computer hardware, then we might be able to expect that machines "for the rest of us" might be affordable in another five years. At the present time blank disks are priced at $40.00 each, exactly what my first box of floppy disks cost ten years ago; a box of budget floppies now costs less than $2.00. My objection to the Sony CD-ROM reader and the clones that are being made by other Japanese electronics firms is that the books used in these devices are not programmable by ordinary users. Sony bemoans the fact that it has few titles available. What do they expect when you have to go through either Sony or one of their associate firms to make a CD-ROM disk for the machine. Liberate the CD-ROM disk from the clutches of the international corporations and you'll have thousands of titles. Cheep IBM-PC clones allowed millions of people to use computers, whereas if computers had stayed at the price levels set by IBM, computers would still be in the hands of only the elite. Look at Apple computers. For years they were priced beyond the reach of the majority of potential computer users, and as a result most people eventually bought IBM-PC clones. The result of this economic fact can be seen in the availability of shareware software. There are tens of thousands of shareware programs available for IBM-PC compatible machines; the amount of Apple shareware available is not even close. This is because the inexpensive clones eliminated the financial barriers that users faced. For a few hundred dollars anyone can become a programmer for IBM-PC machines; you still need over a thousand dollars to play in the Apple orchard. The same thing could happen with electronic books. If we had an inexpensive system for programming books that could be read on hand-held reader machines, then there would shortly by an explosion of book titles. New types of books would also emerge. There would be an explosion of creativity, but first the economic barriers have to come down. My latest electronic book reader design has abandoned the calculator mode so as to be able to meet the simplicity requirement. The design includes only keys for scrolling up and down by either one line of by one screen. It also includes six function keys which could be used in various ways by electronic books. They could be used to implement hypertext or interactive features. The technology now exists to make such an electronic almost from off-the-shelf components. The only thing lacking is vision on the part of computer designers and manufacturers. There should be someone in this country who can see that there is the potential to develop a huge and profitable business here. Alas, we will probably have to wait for some Japanese "Steven Jobs" to bring something like this out from his garage. # # # To see what I envision the electronic book reader to be, run the E-BOOK program on this disk. Someone out there PLEASE STEAL THIS DESIGN! [[[ PRESS the RIGHT ARROW (numeric keypad) for next file, or PRESS INS key to return to the INDEX MENU. To QUIT, return to the INDEX MENU, then enter 0 (zero). End of file.