The Espresso Book Machine
I don't know about you, but I find this a little terrifying. The Espresso Book Machine (shouldn't it be able to crank out lattes? Or tea? I mean, really--is that so much harder?) prints on-demand books in under four minutes that are, it claims, "indistinguishable from the factory original." First of all--"factory"? Yes, I suppose so, but that makes it sound like there's an assembly line of writers sitting there with typewriters, Kindles, laptops and a conveyor belt of zip drives. I do like the humor of the thing--if you look carefully at the screen when they show it, there's a button that says, "Cancel! STOP!" as if someone is running, shrieking across the room: "Nooooooo! Not that booooooooook! Noooooooo!"--which, I suppose, could happen.
But the scariest part is that they say that making books now "requires minimal human intervention"--as if that's a good thing!
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3 comments:
I agree, that is frightening! People. We need people doing these things before we all get replaced by robots.
But I must confess it would be perfect for when I critique my friends books...I could cram that think in the basement and crank our a manuscript, cover and all, and read it in one sitting!
Love the new layout.
It kinda makes books look cheap to me... like the plastic machine that makes a little Mickey Mouse or something.
But--it was really cool to watch. :)
This makes me wonder how bibliophiles will be defined in the future. By the shear number of paperbacks or downloaded E-Books? Admittedly, I only have a handful of beautifully-made hard bound books. But it makes me sad not to dream of a library filled with various editions of classics that have been imprinted with an author's signature or some previous owner's notes that create a story within a story. Sorry. Maybe it's just that time of the month.
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