Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Biggest Electronic Book Store On Earth
Barnes and Noble announced the biggest e-book store on Earth yesterday, just forty-eight years after Stanislaw Lem introduced the idea to patient science fiction fans.
But optons were little used, the sales-robot told me. The public preferred lectons - like lectons read out loud, they could be set to any voice, tempo, and modulation. Only scientific publications having a very limited distribution were still printed, on a plastic imitation paper. Thus all my purchases fitted into one pocket, though there must have been almost three hundred titles.
The originals - Crystomatrices - were not to be seen; they were kept behind pale blue enamel the steel plates.... Actually, a great achievement, and yet I regretted the passing of books.
Lem didn't concentrate on the online distribution aspect in his 1961 story, the notion of networked information distribution having been worked out by Hugo Gernsback a half-century earlier (see the entry for personalized news).
And Barnes and Noble? They intend to have 700,000 titles available for devices like the iPhone and other platforms. BN plans to charge $9.99 for new releases and bestsellers (as Amazon.com does today).
More interestingly, BN plans to partner with Plastic Logic, whose e-reader will be coming out next year. Take a look at last year's prototype version in this handy video.
I spent the afternoon in a bookstore. There were no books in it. None had been printed for nearly half a century... No longer was it possible to browse among shelves, to weigh volumes in hand, to feel their heft, the promise of ponderous reading. The bookstore resembled, instead, an electronic laboratory. The books were crystals with recorded contents. They can be read the aid of an opton, which was similar to a book but had only one page between the covers. At a touch, successive pages of the text appeared on it.
(Read more about Lem's electronic book store)
(Plastic Logic reader)
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 7/22/2009)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Lifestyle ")
Sleep Pods At Daxing International Airport
'Do not waste your priceless company on the unappreciative folds of a sleep pod...' - Chris Boyce, 1967.
Amazon Blimp Parent Drone Concept
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...' - Daniel Suarez, 2012.
Tortoise Mobile Smart Stores
'... all round the city dozens of cars have rented out their trunks, which contain cigars and scotch and stuff.' - Karl Schroeder, 2019.
Sony Pocket Air Conditioner Is Phil Dick's Idea!
'... he went to the hall closet to get his pith helmet and his mandatory cooling-unit.' - Philip K. Dick, 1965.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
'Did you never see a moving house before?'
Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.'
Terraformer Industries Make Methane
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'
Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.
'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
ISS Plagued By Leak - Again!
'There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel...'
Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
Outdoor Video Screens Can Be Arbitrarily Large
The Shape of Things To Come
Infrared Contact Lenses To See In The Dark
'I can see in the dark, Case.'
What'll You Have? Extinct Animals Returned, Or Synthetic Eggshells?
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
Sunbird Pulsar Fusion Like Leinster's Space Tug
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
RentAHuman App Lets AI Agents Hire Humans
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'
Unitree CEO Wang Xingxing Runs With His G1 Robot Army
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
