Plastic Logic Reader

Do technophiles read science fiction?
I don’t have any data to go by, but I think we can safely assume that the number of tech-lovers who read science fiction is statistically higher than the number of Luddites who read science fiction. Or the number of technophiles who read Luddite fiction, assuming there is any. Note to self: possible new niche market for series of novels…
Along this line of inquiry, I have to wonder if those engineers, designers and scientists who develop new technologies are readers of science fiction.
This comes to mind specifically because of a new product introduced very recently by Plastic Logic.
Tech and gadget blogs of every sort were crowing about Plastic Logic’s new “Kindle Killer” that was shown off at DEMOfall in San Diego on September 8. Even the New York Times got in line to increase the buzz about this forthcoming product.
So what does this have to do with science fiction?
Well, for years, sci-fi fans have been reading about, or seeing in movies, a thin tablet or “sheet” of what amounts to electronic paper that displays the current newspaper in a fluid, interactive format.
Although we clearly already have the essence of this on our computers through the modern miracle of the Web, this particular expression of display text and graphics has been played around with in various incarnations for years. And nobody has gotten it quite right.
Not for lack of trying, however.
Sony had a digital book reader, the PRS505, but it was expensive and had enough other nags to stop it from catching on right away. It might have been the right tool, but it wasn’t yet the right time for that too.
There were a few other e-readers out there, but the market wasn’t viable until Jeff Bezos at Amazon released the Kindle last year.
The Kindle looked like a much more developed iteration of this whole concept. For one, it came from Amazon, so the synergy is obvious – Amazon had 88,000 digital titles available on launch, and it also had Whispernet, a free EVDO based wireless connection through which a user can purchase and download ebooks without the use of a computer. And Whispernet is free.
The screen was readable, it played MP3s and therefore audiobooks, allowed newspaper and magazine subscriptions, which is awesome, and best of all, Amazon provided a free service converting unprotected document formats into a Kindle-friendly format. Smart and smarter.
Bezos claimed to have sold out every run of the Kindle, and I have no reason to disbelieve, but the reviews were never as enthusiastic as one would hope.
That is probably partially because of the pricing problems. Nobody wants to pay a price for ebooks that comes anywhere close to the price of a hardcopy book, especially after you’ve shelled out $349 for the device you need to read it on. Sure, it’s amazing to load a Kindle with a host of books and carry it around with all the reading you need for weeks and weeks (or more), but there is something innately kludgy about the very action of reading a book on this handheld platform that doesn’t hook you in quite the same visceral way as a paperback. Not at first, anyway.
But that doesn’t explain why I was using past tense in describing Amazon’s reader.
You can blame Plastic Logic for that.
Followers of tech news are used to reading what amounts to PR trumpeting about the latest whizzbang device, but when the New York Times, Business Week and the Wall Street Journal are all over a gadget story, and when that gadget story isn’t about an Apple product, then we’re talking about some serious traction.
When CEO Richard Archuleta pulled out the Plastic Logic Reader this past week on the stage in San Diego, he showed that he may not be the most inspiring speaker in tech, but he may have one of the more interesting products people have seen in a while.
Archuleta called his reader a “business document reader,” choosing not to pit it directly up against the Kindle, which is clearly designed for consumers. But he was being a bit disingenuous. After calling it a business reader, he listed a bunch of features:
The reader he held up is the size of a pad of paper.
It weighs a third as much as the Macbook Air.
It has a battery life measured in days.
It is much more damage-resistant than a laptop screen. (he showed it being hit with a shoe)
It holds pretty much any kind of document.
It is open format.
It is instant on.
It has a touch screen and the ability to mark up and comment on documents.
It has a popup virtual QWERTY keyboard.
You can throw it like the cool weapon in that crappy Krull movie. It will probably break, but you can do it.

When I look at a tool like this, I don’t see strictly business applications. I see that, as soon as they get the capacity for showing colours – yes it’s black and white in the demo – they have a product that will capture enormous public interest.
Sure, he can sell these to busy sales reps who don’t want to carry a briefcase full of paper through airports and hotels all over the world, but I think he can sell even more to comics fans, magazine readers and news junkies.
Get that thing on the Web and pack a few more features into it and every serious student in the world (who doesn’t live in a developing nation) is going to want one. And schools will start handing them out to first years.
Of course, all of this is price dependent, but inevitably the price will fall, and then even I will have one, and it will be awesome.
And I’m sure that I won’t be the only one who can’t wait to read Neuromancer on it.
The NaySayer