There’s a scene in Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age in which a young hat-thief is being tried in the court of Judge Fang. The judge’s assistant enters the room at the start of the trial and ceremoniously unrolls a meter-by-meter square of paper on a low black table, and it becomes the center of action in the trial. The piece of paper is actually a display device that can access government cameras, graphs, and text, and can receive input from the user via finger-touch or a stylus. It is a most remarkable device and frankly, I’ve wanted one ever since.
It’s now looking like I might get one sooner than you’d think.
We seem to be striding toward that particular future with impressive speed. One could make the case that laptops represent our first faltering steps in that direction, but I say Amazon’s Kindle represents the next leap forward. Wafer thin and with its low battery consumption and low-eye-strain reflective surface, it marks a huge leap toward blending the benefits of paper with those of computers. But that’s only the beginning of what’s happening out there in Science Land.
First of all, the Kindle’s black-and-white E-Ink technology is already preparing to give way to color screens. Currently, each pixel in a Kindle is comprised of 60 tiny electronic balls, each with a black hemisphere and a white one. As described by New Scientist, in the color version, each ball will be replaced with four smaller balls of white, green, red, and blue, each of which is switched “on” or “off” by a single transistor. Until recently, E-Ink couldn’t get transistors small enough to make this system work, but that changed last year. Now that the technology works, E-Ink expects to have color devices ready by the end of 2010.
But then there’s the battery obstacle. Batteries are a major problem for all portable devices, but if we want to thin, foldable computers, there’s going to have to be a solution to the big, bulky batteries we use now. E-Ink devices start off with an advantage in power use, because the balls only require electricity to change from one state to the other. When the Kindle is simply displaying a single page, it uses no electricity at all.
One future possibility for providing that small amount of power might be printable batteries. Yes, printable batteries. Not printable on your home ink jet, but still printable right onto paper. To make one, the manufacturers’ printer sandwiches a layer of carbon nanotubes between a layer of manganese oxide (the cathode) and a layer of zinc (the anode). Together they can produce 1.5 volts of electricity for short periods of time. In series the scientists can generate 3 volts, 4.5 volts, and so on. Granted, these batteries of have short lifetimes. The plan right now is to use them on RFID chips, animated posters, and snail mail greeting cards (do people still send those?).
But if the lifetime of printable batteries can be extended, then the Diamond Age scene becomes more and more feasible. Really, how many years away can it be?
July 10th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
I bought a Kindle not too long ago and I have to say, I quickly came to love it. While I do have some grumblings about the method of business, including DRM for books, the device itself is incredible. It is good to point out the method of display as when I first heard about it I gave it no real thought as I figured it would be like a smaller laptop or larger cell phone, but the display is incredibly print-like. The battery itself, with wireless turned off, lasts for days and days, requiring only a few minutes to recharge. The weight is no more than that of a paperback and with its storage capabilities you can easily carry around enough books for several days worth of traveling in one thin electronic toy.
I use the Kindle to log onto amazon and buy a book with a single click. It’s uploaded immediately to my Kindle and completed in just a few moments. Even if the transmission is not instant as described above, it is remarkably faster than going to the bookstore or buying it and waiting for the shipping. It truly is a fascinating creation and I look forward to the color version, I imagine things such as comic books/graphic novels will quickly go to it, along with art books and many more.
And no, I don’t work for them! I just love my Kindle, it goes everywhere with me now, not just my laptop.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
i also love my kindle. it’s the first electronic device i’ve ever owned that i’ve loved *more* 6 months after purchase than i did when i cracked open the shipping carton. there really is something different about this thing. the first time i looked at its display, the muscles in my skull *relaxed*. as much as i love my ipod touch, looking at its screen has the opposite effect on my head musculature.
like jason, above, i also dislike amazon’s method of business for the device. i think about this a lot, and have a couple of ideas that aren’t necessarily mutually compatible.
1. the drm thing is a drag. given copyright laws, though, it really could be that we will be stuck with a choice between a. unlimited downloads to a finite number of registered devices, and b. a single, write-protected copy of each book, movable to any device — but when we pass it to a sibling we no longer have it on our device; and if it gets corrupted, too bad. just like if you drop your paperback into the john by accident. i do not yet have an opinion as to which would be preferable; but so far i do like the convenience of being able to continue where i left off on my ipod touch.
2. amazon may not intend to leave things as they are. it seems plausible (and a little like wishful thinking, i admit) that amazon really might just have decided to jumpstart wide adoption of e-ink readers and electronic formats; and since the costs associated with spreading a new technology are so high, amazon has decided to lock us customers into giving amazon the money for any paid content. once the technology has been widely adopted, perhaps amazon will ease up on this. the reason this seems plausible to me, is that amazon has done quite well with print books, which one can purchase anywhere; and i can’t imagine that amazon wouldn’t be perfectly happy to receive money for e-books from people who own other devices — sony reader, irex, bookeen, etc. why should e-books be so different from print in the end of the day? maybe they only have to be different at the beginning of the day.
July 11th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
I must look at a kindle.
July 12th, 2009 at 10:01 am
It’s good to see others (including the other commenters) as happy with the Kindle as I’ve been, despite the known non-ideal implementation of some features. I’m more often amazed at how well they thought out certain features, mainly the study features (highlights, annotations, searches – options for book/kindle/google/wikipedia) and the access to these on our own Amazon web pages.
This is even without mentioning it has 24/7 free wireless (no add’l monthly charges when needing to browse the web for reference), unheard of until now for a moblle device.
Most realize that’s worth quite a bit of money, even if cellular networks are slow and the Kindle’s web browser, in b&w, can be a less-than-ideal experience. The thing is it works, and I often use the faster mobile versions of google or Yelp! etc when out of the home. Having Wikipedia always by your side wherever you happen to be is no small thing for me either.
– Andrys
kindleworld.blogspot.com