The Future of Digital Books

Tabercil writes "The New York Times has an article about the mass scanning of books, which argues that actions such as Google's Book Search project are an inevitable outgrowth of the internet." From the article: "Scanning technology has been around for decades, but digitized books didn't make much sense until recently, when search engines like Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN came along. When millions of books have been scanned and their texts are made available in a single database, search technology will enable us to grab and read any book ever written. Ideally, in such a complete library we should also be able to read any article ever written in any newspaper, magazine or journal. And why stop there?"

Re:Globalization...

[voice_of_all_reason]

China or another country with lax copyright laws surely will.

Yeah, but then we have to deal with crap like "Animar farm" and "The Bibre"

Why stop anywhere?

[suv4x4]

Ideally, in such a complete library we should also be able to read any article ever written in any newspaper, magazine or journal. And why stop there?

Let's leave no poem on a toilet paper or a speeding ticket unscanned!

Re:Star Trek replicators

[suv4x4]

What I always found interesting about the Star Trek universe was the concept of a 'replicator'. You press a button and speak your order (e.g. Tea, Earl Grey, Hot) and get your order instantiated out of seemingly nothing.

Do we look like seemingly nothing to you, sir? I'm insulted and demand an apology.

- The Tiny Dwarfs Working in Replicators Syndicate (TDWRS)

Fast forward to the future

[Anonymous Coward]

Executives in Hollywood watches in awe as Google creates sequels of books with targeted advertisement and tailored endings that suits each individual users. "With this technology, we didn't have to do sequels of 60s, 70s and 80s movies that no one wants to pay $6 to watch, but tailor each sequel with targeted advertisement for each individual user." said an executive who wanted to remain anonymous. "It will be the golden crack pipe from Hollywood... everyone will want to get more of it." he continued.

Re:We obey the Laws of Thermodynamics on this site

[Lordpidey]

Wait, its not normal to carry around.... Err.... this is awkward.... uhh these jugs contain apple juice, yah... apple juice.

Re:Scanned Books? No one is interested!

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously you didn't name the files correctly. All those books would be going like hotcakes if you named the files something like 'donkeydongdoesdebbie.avi'.

You must market to your audience. ;)

Re:Star Trek replicators

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Finally, if replicators can easily create new replicators, how can anybody possibly hope to keep such things from becoming widespread?

Natural selection.
Picture this: Some guy with a replicator ordering: "Plutonium, weapon grade, 50Kg".
Now picture the look on his face when his newly replicated plutonium becomes supercritical only a few metres away from him.
Nobody and their neighbours makes such a mistake twice.

Virtual Books

[brunes69]

I can't wait! [jt.org]