Burning the Page: The eBook revolution and the future of reading

decay or decline in entertainment habits is greater now than ever before. Even if it’s not caused by bookworms.
    There are steps we could take to safeguard all our books from blight, of course. Libraries already excel in this respect, and as long as libraries continue to hold on to their own content and do not rely on the vaults of retailers, they can continue to help. In fact, there’s an initiative called the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) that aims to do this.
    Led by a Harvard librarian, the DPLA aims to compete in a way with the Google Book project. Millions of volumes will still be digitized, but the libraries will be in charge, and independent readers worldwide can freely access digital holdings on their smartphones or computers. The DPLA is still in its early years, but its efforts—as well as those of similar projects, such as the World Digital Library project funded by the U.S. Library of Congress and UNESCO—may be the safeguards we need.
    Librarians are unlikely heroes. Who would have thought that librarians would come to our culture’s rescue, averting disaster and a literary bookocalypse?
    That said, sadly, there isn’t a single library from classical antiquity that has survived. I mention the top three such libraries in a later chapter, but there were other, smaller ones. They were all destroyed, with the possible exception of the personal library of Julius Caesar’s father-in-law—and that only “survived” because it was buried under a hundred feet of hardened lava from an erupting volcano. About 1,800 scrolls “survive” in carbonized form. (Think of Han Solo frozen into a black block in Star Wars , or think of leaving a book at the site of an atom bomb explosion.) These scrolls aren’t being read anytime soon.
    We face the same problem of long-term survival with digitization efforts. Even if a book is digitized, will its file format survive? Will hardware even exist that can read it one day, centuries from now? Will the old Kindle or Nook in your desk drawer somehow survive the eons intact and surface again as a kind of Rosetta Stone that can be used to finally read and decipher troves of ebooks? Am I being too pessimistic in my worries for the future, or do you think we’re not collectively worried enough about book blight?
    http://jasonmerkoski.com/eb/18.html

The Future of E-Reader Hardware: Pico Projectors?
    No doubt by now you’ve heard of Amazon’s Microbook. It launched a few months ago, and being an early adopter, I was one of the first to buy it, try it out, and write a review.
    The company describes the device in their promotional material as follows:
    “The Microbook: An e-reader combined with a pico projector and connected to your Kindle account. No power cables. No hassles. No buttons.”
    The Microbook is very cheap because it has no screen and no moving parts.
    It ships from Amazon’s Japan offices, along with a little robot toy, although I’m not sure why. I can’t read the instructions, but that’s okay. As with any consumer electronics project, I shouldn’t have to. It should just work.
    All the Microbook needs is a network connection. My home’s Wi-Fi worked just fine.
    Because it was registered to me when I bought it, the Microbook knows who I am and what I’m currently reading. To read, all I need is a blank surface, like a wall or a table. So when I first turn the Microbook on and aim it at the wall, it shows the same page from the same book I’m currently reading on my Kindle.
    There are no buttons, but it responds to voice control. “Turn the page,” I say, and the image projected onto the wall changes to the next page. I can also tell it, “Go to the store,” if I want to shop for ebooks.
    Privacy is a bit of a problem, but I can read my books on the subway.
    You can buy Microbook accessories, like a tripod for hands-free reading or a book with blank pages. This way you can pretend you’re reading a print book.
    What I like about it is that I can project the Microbook onto the ceiling at night when I read. It doesn’t get too hot in my hands. And when I turn the Microbook off at night, the Japanese robot lights up its scary eyes.
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    There is no Microbook, of course. Not yet, anyway. I’m not aware of Amazon or any other retailer with plans for building such a device, but this is one of the ways I myself see the nature of e-readers changing.
    When we hold a book or comic or magazine or even an e-reader in our hands, it’s