Act it out

Read the article below. With a partner, discuss the new invention. Is it really “the book to end all books”?

Role 1: a computer enthusiast

Role 2: a skeptic who has an extensive personal library

Birth of the book to end all books

This could be the last book you will ever buy. Scientists have developed an electronic tome that is capable of carrying thousands of titles in a single volume.

The revolutionary design uses “electronic ink” – “e-ink” – located within the pages, which can be programmed to print any text downloaded into the book.

The volume, which is the size and shape of a normal book, will have up to 200 pages of “digital paper” and is likely to be on sale within three years.

“My interest is to preserve all the great aspects of a book but to add additional features that will take books into the 21^st century,” said Professor Joseph Jacobson, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has invented the book.

Titles will be downloaded from libraries or the Internet into a computer in the book’s spine, which will then send out messages to particles that coat each page.

The particles are black on one side and white on the other and are able to flip over, depending on the electric charge beneath them – making patterns that resemble traditional type. The patterns remain in place until the book is reprogrammed, while a display on the spine will allow readers to choose the title they want.

Experts believe it will do more than simply make reading cheaper and more convenient. It could convert skeptics to the attractions of information technology – the bookworms who have so far rejected computers, preferring instead to curl up with a blockbuster in bed.

Jacobson argues the invention will also reap environmental rewards. “Just think how many trees it will save,” he said.

Some book lovers, however, are not persuaded. Alan Clark, the politician and diarist who has an extensive personal library, said the invention would not interest him.

“A book is a very personal thing and this would mean losing that,” he said. “Getting into a book is more than just simply absorbing a text, and there is a particular pleasure to be had in a book-lined room.”

The Times

Have your say

Comment upon the following statements.

“Printed books are the dinosaurs of the 20^th century. Electronic books are the future.”

“If anything, electronic books are reminders of how good real books are.”

III books shall survive

1. Read Jorge Luis Borges’ essay. In your opinion, what is the key idea of the essay? Do you agree with it? Why or why not?

2. Comment on the last two sentences of the essay: “If books were to disappear history would disappear. So would men.”

BOOKS

I believe books will never disappear. It is impossible for it to happen. Of all mankind's diverse tools, undoubtfully the most astonishing are his books. All the others are extensions of the body. The telephone is an extension of his voice; the telescope and microscope extensions of his sight; the sword and the plough are extensions of his arms. In Caesar and Cleopatra, when Bernard Shaw refers to the Library of Alexandria, he says it is mankind's memory. I would add it is also mankind's imagination. Humanity's vigils have generated infinite pages of infinite books. Mankind owes all that we are to the written word. Why? What is our past but a succession of dreams? What difference is there between dreaming and remembering? Between remembering dreams and recalling the past? Books are the great memory of the centuries. Consequently their function is irreplaceable. If books were to disappear history would disappear. So would men.