At Robert Nagle’s suggestion I’m reading The Gay Place—Billy Lee Brammer‘s classic political novel built around a fictionalized Lyndon Baines Johnson.
The lyrical description of the land surrounding and comprising Austin goes on and on like a long Texas road, more than 400 words. And that’s short compared to the warm-up sections of oldies such as A Tale of Two Cities or some relatively recent fiction.
Best for text
While you can read e-books on anything, from a cellphone to a 32-inch-desktop monitor, tablets are best for taking in novels like Brammer’s, at least for me.
You can see nice stretches of text, wide open before you, like a prairie horizon, but can at the same time enjoy reasonable portability. Simply put, tablets with good enough screens can be catnip for literature lovers—and not just them but also, say, students who need big, detailed illustrations in books.
Solar Reader’s cost vs. the OLPC laptop’s—and the literacy possibilities
That’s why I’m excited about the e-book potential of the OLPC laptop, which you can fold into a tablet.
But for now, following the latest price increase, the “$100” OLPC machine is selling for $188 despite the inevitability of equivalent hardware costing well under the magic figure in the future.
Could it be that we need to strip down the OLPC laptop into a lean, mean e-book reading tablet and worry about traditional literacy ahead of the computer variety? Such an idea is behind Martin Woodhouse‘s Solar Reader concept, as I’ll call it here (he’s no longer so certain about “I-Reader” because of a possible trademark problem with Apple).
Piece-by-piece cost-slashing
We’ve had this discussion before in the TeleBlog (here and here), examining whether the lean version could go for a mere $50. I don’t expect that to happen soon. But most likely, without add-ons like a video camera, the Solar Reader could be much less expensive than the OLPC laptop, and beyond that, the solar cell would address the power issue in rural areas in developing countries.
Individual components like the keyboard and camera cost probably don’t that much in themselves. But together, the numbers add up. What’s more, cameras and the like sip extra juice, making the built-in solar approach harder to implement, if indeed it is possible with the standard OLPC XO machines.
Possibilities in for rich and poor countries alike
I can even see the Solar Reader as a consumer machine in the United States, Europe, Australia and Japan. The solar cells would go well with the 7.5-inch screen—ideally to be borrowed from the OLPC machine—which for e-reading is at its best in bright light. And, yes, there could be versions without solar cells or, better, with them as options.
If publishers want to grow markets and outside the States, they’d do well to consider Woodhouse’s emphasis on the basics, which would also mean a simpler machine, usable by a wider range of people than the OLPC laptop will be. Not to mention less need for technical support in remote jungles and the like.
Result? More book, magazine and newspaper readers—many more. As one constructive critic of the OLPC project has said, correctly, e-book devices for developing countries need to be cheap, simple to learn and use, and have screens easy enough to read from.
Those, coincidentally, happen to be among the very requirements for successful mass commercialization of e-book technology. Perhaps the Murdoch interests, which have donated $2.5 million to OLPC, should help develop the Solar Reader, either through Martin or through the present OLPC.
I’d like copyright-minded publishers to worry less about perfectly leak-proof books—impossible, impossible, impossible—and more about growing the book market, period.
In that vein, the Solar Reader would be a kick start for publishers and writers in developing countries, especially if publishers in richer nations teamed up with local partners to keep the books and other texts relevant.
Future Billy Lee Bremmers could be writing about and from the hills and plains of Ethopia, not just those of Texas. And the Bremmers here in the States would also benefit, along with schoolchildren in New Orleans and other places that are now more or less off the radar screens of the OLPC project, despite U.S. interest in the laptop. Tragically, the actual Bremmer is dead. But wouldn’t it be nice if technology, rather than imperiling long-form writing, actually encouraged practitioners like him.
The interactivity angle
“But David,” long-time TeleBlog fans may ask, remembering my interest in interactive e-books, “where’s the keyboard?”
My answer would be, “Hey, if there’s enough of a price difference, let’s place traditional literacy above interactivity.” Besides, with a foldout stand, you can prop up a tablet and if anything it will be better for both reading and text entry than a laptop is in many situations. Just add a keyboard via USB. For most reading, you can ditch a physical keyboard for a virtual one (for searches). That is where things could lead.
For now, however, we could follow Martin Woodhouse’s vision and worry more about the price than full interactivity, which could happen later either through improved Solar Readers, OLPC machines, or—where the electricity and support were available—perhaps recycled machines or low-cost machine from NComputing.
With the same format in use, students could swap files beteen Solar Readers and the desktops or terminal-based systems.
The F Word
Speaking of formats, I was pleased to get a letter from Martin saying that, no, he isn’t insistent on the constant use of a special format for his machine, although the Illumination format is clearly still dear to him. His main concern is something allowing files compact enough for the Solar Reader (again, my term, not Martin’s). I’d hope that the IDPF’s .epub format would work, as would related e-reading software—if not at the start, then later on.
Related: Martin’s latest thoughts: Reading eBooks in the Sunshine., in the unofficial OLPC News, where his Solar Reader proposal first appeared. Note his point that the Solar Reader would not “supplant” the OLPC laptop but “lead up to it.”
Tablets vs. mobile phones: I’m open to all solutions. Oluniyi David Ajao of Mobile Africa has written on mobile phones as a way to spread e-books in Africa. Phones are easier to tote around and encompass different uses. I don’t see one form factor preempting all others.
About the title: “Gay” is used in the older sense.
Suggestion to Robert: Maybe you ought to lobby for the inclusion of The Gay Place in Wikipedia’s list of classic political novels. Surprisingly it’s missing despite accolades such as one from the late David Halberstam in the New York Times Book Review: “There are two classic American political novels. One is All the King’s Men…the other is The Gay Place, a stunning, original, intensely human novel inspired by Lyndon Johnson…It will be read a hundred years from now.”
With the XO ballooning in price, it might be a good idea for OLPC to consider a solution that combines both XO and the ‘Solar Reader’ in a package. If the SR could be put out for $100,* then equal numbers of SRs plus XOs would result in an average price of $150 per device, which is close to the price the XO was estimated to sell for, back 6-9 months ago. I suppose that students could be teamed into pairs and swap the XO and SR they jointly ‘own’ back and forth.
Obviously this would not be the ideal of Mr Negroponte, as the SR is completely passive. But a certain amount of time for a student could well be spent reading on the SR while the partner is creating/exploring on the XO.
I fear that Mr Negroponte & co. would not like this idea and are dead-set on their ideal of XO or nothing, and would prefer a smaller launch, much-delayed, of their ideal. Undoubtedly they believe that the full potentials of the XO will, once proven in the field, so stun and amaze the world, that more orders will be forthcoming, and prices will go down, stimulating more demand.
(* the reason I quote a price of $100 for the SR? Well the $100 XO is now priced more like double that, at $200. So I doubled the estimated $50 for the SR to bring costs up to current XO-standards.)
Not that it really matters, but the Gay Place novel has nothing to do with homosexuality….
Robert: Yes, I was tempted to make the same point. It’s good that you clarified, not to disparage any group but to make sure people know the true nature of the book (we’ve got some very loyal and very gay readers among other varieties). – David