Sunday, June 05, 2005

Giving Ideas to Copy-leftist Inventors

Books inspire in me a predatory impulse. I crave to usurp them all, to add them to my library, to have them at my beck and call.

In reality, I can xerox only so many books. I can buy only so many shelves. I can’t imagine reading for pleasure on the screen. The thought of reading an e-book makes me quiver with panic.

So, to plant an idea in bravehearts out there who, like me, care for books, feel wolfish about them, and have more tech savoir faire than me:

The world needs a device to zap a book into a chip, and chips back into real books. With a straight spine, pages that can be stroked and patted and thumbed, the smell of words aging better than wine, a shape you can walking, hold comfortingly close to your bosom.

If someone could master this technology, just imagine: I could have thousands of book-chips packed away in a suitcase, all zappable into books whenever I wish to dip into them. Imagine the marketing possibilities!

A device like this could also be part of the government’s literacy drive: in a city like Bombay, where every inch of space goes a long way, the government could in good faith exhort residents to buy and read more books.

Interested, anyone? In funding the research, or becoming a part of the research team, or showing solidarity? Write me.

3 comments:

Anvita Thapliyal said...

aaaaaaaaaa...at last somebody who phtostats books !! i take out printouts too, often it is cheaper.i have a reccuring sweet dreams about a book shop whr all the books i hav ever wanted r being sold dirt cheap and the seller has no idea of the gems he is giving away.aaaaaaaaaaaaa....sigh!

Anonymous said...

I think Uncle Bill, of Gates fame, is working on this idea, if only tangentially.

~Sashi

Anonymous said...

food for thought...
http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/funtheyhad.html