THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 19, 1996 TAG: 9602170218
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ROGER A. GRIMES, SPECIAL TO BUSINESS WEEKLY
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
Print is dead. Even as you hold this paper and read my column, editors and publishers around the world realize that the paper America holds so dearly is a dinosaur.
In the future, all newspapers, magazines and books will be delivered solely by electronic means. It is not a matter of if, but of when. It is not a circumstance to be decided by personal preference, but by economics.
Newspapers around the country are hurriedly masterminding ways to reduce staff and redesign the way they do business in order to help offset rising costs.
According to the Association of American Publishers, 58 percent of the price you pay for any book is for the printing, transportation and storage of paper. Only 25 percent of the profits from any book ever makes its way into the pockets of the publisher and author.
Just last week, Omni and Longevity magazines folded their print counterparts, but will live on electronically via the Internet. But profit alone isn't the only reason printed media will vanish.
Delivered electronically, all forms of media can stay more current. Often, by the time a book is published, it is out of date. Newspapers delivered electronically can be updated on the hour.
You will even be able to choose what type of news you are most interested in. Some of us might bring in more business news, others might read just the funnies.
Not only will prices be cheaper, but the number of books, magazines and newspapers will grow; expanding like the channels on satellite television.
With all media being delivered digitally, everyone will have the opportunity to publish. Granted, just as now, the larger electronics publishing houses will have the money to buy and market the higher quality works.
Most of us feel nothing can replace paper and cringe at the thought at having to read the daily newspaper on a computer screen or carry a laptop around to read a novel. To all but the most computer literate, printed books and newspapers are the perfect media. We can read them in bed or carry them to the beach, and not worry about the battery running low or sand getting stuck in the keyboard.
But researchers at MIT's Media Laboratory are working on a solution that will take away the ink but keep the book by manufacturing a computer display that reads like paper.
The electronic page will be formed on a real paper substrate - it will look, feel and smell like paper. But what will be written on it is as permanent or temporary as the reader chooses.
The technology is based on a toner particle with a black and white side. The particles can be flipped to one side or another to form characters with text.
Once the power is turned off, the last written image remains indefinite. Enough of these electronic pages can be collected together to create a book. Then without changing your ``book,'' you download new information into your one-volume library. A single electronic book could hold the Bible, Moby Dick, and John Grisham's latest thriller. Joseph M. Jacobson, who heads this project at MIT, thinks several hundred book titles could fit on one electronic book.
Readers will be free to choose a size book that suits their personality. I like books about half the size of an 8 1/2- by 11-inch piece of paper and about 1-inch thick. My wife is more comfortable with popular paperbacks. People with eyesight problems could choose a bigger version with extra-large text for all their titles.
Jacobson, sees the first prototype coming out in two years with augmentations to the original technology coming soon after.
``Adjustable fonts are one idea, but color and the entry of handwritten notes are some of the probable additions,'' Jacobson said.
He would ultimately like to create a page where electronic images could be manipulated by a stylus.
Downloading new book titles will either be done via the Internet or by inserting a small disc (similar to a CD-ROM) into the book.
You can either pay by credit card or by digital dollars. Even for information sold on disc, several thousand discs could be recorded, shipped, and sold for a fraction of the cost of a box of paper-bound books.
Suppose you get interested in old warships. You can do an Internet search and find the bibliographies of what you are looking for.
Then you can download the complete text of each into your book and read at your own pace. And in the morning, you could ``pick-up'' the local paper, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today, all in one place.
Using some sort of electronic table of contents, the user will be able to jump between publications. The electronic book will remember where you left off with each title.
A lot of people who have heard of The Media Laboratory's work with digital books do not believe paper can ever go away, but I try to remember my initial feeling when I saw a prototype of the first VCR being show at Disney's Epcot Center nearly 20 years ago.
It was incredible. I didn't believe they could fit an entire movie on a little tape cartridge so we could watch it at home. by CNB