Super Books

I've been thinking about electronic paper - you know, rolls like paper, thin like paper, image can change as needed.

There's a common sci-fi object - an electronic book. An electronic book is made of electronic paper and some kind of computery system to control what displays on the pages.

It always seemed thoroughly pointless to me. You wouldn't need multiple pages. The computer can "turn the page" without you having to physically turn the page.

But there is a use.

Imagine if each page of "paper" is a self-contained wifi-driven computer. Maybe it's paper the thickness of a credit card, with the edges not more electronic paper, but instead wafer-thin electronics.

Each page of paper could then be attached (magnetically, say) to the spine of the book. Or detached.

Then what you could do is disassemble the book. If there's something you need, "rip it out" and put it next to you where you can refer to it, play with it, change it however you need. When you're done, stick it back into the book.

It would effectively be a set of portable monitors - perhaps two dozen small monitors. They're relatively cheap, so you could actually pass them back and forth between collaborators... they're self-contained, frungible, and use insignificant power, so you could actually separate them from their book for a long time, swap them, submit papers on them, use them as game pieces... anything.

Now that, I think... that would be really useful. I would give up books and, probably, every other computer for that.