As We May Read: The Reading Appliance Revolution

I n the 1970s, Alan Kay and his colleagues at Xerox PARC envisioned a dynamic, interactive electronic book. Now, nearly 30 years later, that vision has become a reality. A new kind of personal information appliance—the reading appli-ance—is emerging as a tool for serious readers. But is the world ready for reading appliances? Paper books are not only useful but are also a romantic icon of modern culture. Furthermore, previous attempts to replace reading on paper with reading online have failed: So-called paperless offices consume far more paper than they did before the introduction of PCs, while electronic books, such as Sony's Data Discman and Franklin's Bookman, have failed outside niche markets. Despite these past failures, we believe reading appliances are viable. Human factors researchers at our laboratory and elsewhere are analyzing the benefits of paper documents and creating a foundation for designing paper-like computers. Advances in mobile hard-ware—driven by demand for increasingly sophisticated laptop computers—have made it possible to build the necessary hardware. Additionally, the Web has created a market for online reading by introducing millions of people to it, and books, magazines, newspapers, advertisements, and other printed matter can be produced and read at very low cost. But reading appliance designers face two problems: • People clearly prefer reading on paper to reading on their PCs. • Paper is easier and more comfortable to use than portable computers, no matter how paper-like computers are. The questions we need to ask, then, are " Which, if any, of paper's qualities must reading appliances imitate to be successful? " and " What are the advantages of reading online and how can computers help people read? " WHAT IS READING? No technology is more ubiquitous than the printed word; we often take reading for granted. Although reading is fundamentally seeing and comprehending words and sentences, people read for different reasons and in different ways. Studying a textbook is not like reviewing a court brief. We read to be entertained, to be inspired, to find facts, to follow directions, to prepare for a discussion, or to keep up-to-date. To understand different kinds of reading, it may be useful to characterize reading along two dimensions: the nature of engagement with a text and the breadth of the activity across texts. The educator Mortimer J. Adler describes our engagement with a text as varying from active to passive. 1 Active reading combines reading with …