As If By Chance: Part VII

Sketches of Disruptive Continuity in the Age of Print from Johannes Gutenberg to Steve Jobs

Johannes Gutenberg and Steve Jobs

Johannes Gutenberg and Steve Jobs

While reviewing nearly six centuries of print technology—through the lives and inventions of significant industry innovators—it became clear that the invention of printing by Johannes Gutenberg on the one side, and the breakthrough of desktop publishing by Steve Jobs on the other, are bookends in the age of print. While it has long been acknowledged that the hand-held type mold and printing press are the alpha in the age of manufacturing production of ink-on-paper forms such as books, newspapers, magazines, etc., the view that desktop publishing is the omega of this age is not necessarily widely held. When viewed within the framework of disruptive continuity, it can be shown that the innovations of Gutenberg and Jobs manifest similar attributes in terms of their dramatic departure from previous methods as well as their connection to the multilayered processes of cultural changes in the whole of society in the fifteenth and twentieth centuries.

The advent in 1985 of desktop publishing—a term coined by the founder of Aldus PageMaker, Paul Brainerd—is associated with Steven P. Jobs because he contributed to its conceptualization, he articulated its historical significance, and he was the innovator who made it into a reality. With the support of publishing industry consultant John Seybold, Jobs went on to integrate the technologies and brought together the people that represented the elements of desktop publishing: a personal computer (Apple Macintosh), page layout software (PageMaker), page description language (Adobe PostScript) and a digital laser printing engine (Canon LBP-CX). He demonstrated the integration of these technologies to the world for the first time at the Apple Computer annual stockholders meeting on January 23, 1985, in Cupertino, California, a truly historic moment in the development of graphic communications.

It is a fact that the basic components of desktop publishing had already been developed in the laboratory at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) by the late 1970s. However, due to a series of issues related to timing, cost and the corporate culture at Xerox, the remarkable achievements at PARC—which Steve Jobs had seen during a visit to the lab in 1979 and inspired his subsequent development of the Macintosh computer in 1984—never saw the light of day as commercial products. As is often the case in the history of technology, one innovator may be the first to theorize about a breakthrough, or even build a prototype, but never fully develop it, while another innovator creates a practical and functioning product based on a similar concept and it becomes the wave of the future. This was certainly the case with desktop publishing, where many of the elements that Jobs would later integrate at the Cupertino demo in 1985—the graphical user interface (GUI), the laser printer, desktop software integrating graphics and text, what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) printing—were functioning in experimental form at PARC at least six years earlier. 

What became known as the desktop publishing revolution was just that. It was a transformative departure from the previous photomechanical stage of printing technology on a par with the separation of Gutenberg’s invention of mechanized metal printing type production from the handwork of scribes. Desktop publishing brought the era of phototypesetting that began in the 1950s to a close. It also eventually displaced the proprietary computerized prepress systems that had emerged and were associated with Scitex in the late 1970s. Furthermore, and just as significant, desktop publishing pushed the assembly of text information and graphic content beyond the limits of ink-on-paper and into the realm of electronic and digital media. Thus, desktop publishing accomplished several things simultaneously: (1) it accelerated the process of producing print media by integrating content creation—including the design of text and graphics into a single electronic document on a personal computer—with press manufacturing processes; (2) it expanded the democratization of print by enabling anyone with a personal computer and laser printer to produce printed material starting with a copy of one; (3) it created the basis for the mass personalization of print media and; (4) it laid the foundation for the expansion of a multiplicity of digital media forms within a decade, including electronic publishing in the form of the Portable Document Format (PDF), e-books, interactive media and, ultimately, contributed the global expansion and domination of the Internet and the World Wide Web.

Just as Gutenberg attempted to replicate in mechanized form the handwriting of the scriptoria, the initial transition to digital and electronic media by desktop publishing carried over the various formats of print, i.e., books, magazines, newspaper, journals, etc., into digital files stored on magnetic and optical storage systems such as computer floppy disks, hard drives and compact disks. However, the expansion of electronic media—which was no longer dimensionally restricted by page size or number of pages but limited by data storage capacity and the bandwidth of the processing and display systems—brought the phenomenon of hyperlinks and drove entirely new communications platforms for publishing text, graphics, photographs and audio and video, eventually on mobile wireless devices. Through websites, blogs, streaming content and social media, every individual can record and share their life story, can become a reporter and publisher or participate in, comment on and influence events anywhere in the world.

The groundbreaking significance of desktop publishing, which straddled both the previous printing and the new digital media ages, can be further illustrated by going through the above description by Will Durant of the impact Gutenberg’s invention and substituting the new media for printing and the other contemporary elements of social, intellectual and political life for those the historian identified in the 1950s about the fifteenth century:

To describe all the effects of desktop publishing and electronic media would be to chronicle well more than half the history of the modern mind. … It replaced all informational print by republishing it online as text or in more complex graphical formats like PDF, with methods for managing versions and protecting authenticity so that scholars and researchers in diverse countries may work with one another through video streaming and virtual reality tools, allowing entry of new information and data to be gathered, published and shared in real time as though they were sitting in the same room. … Online electronic media made available to the public all of the world’s manuals and procedural instructions; with the development of international collaborative projects such as Wikipedia, it became the greatest tool for learning that has ever existed, at no charge and available to all. It did not produce Modernism or the information age, but it further paved the way for a new stage of human society that had been promised by the American and French revolutions, based on democracy and where genuine equality exists as a fundamental right for everyone. It made the entire library of literature, music, fine and industrial arts, architecture, theater, athletic competition and cinema instantly available anywhere and at any time in the palm of the hand and prepared the people for an understanding of the role of mythology, mysticism and superstition in history by demonstrating the application of a scientific and materialist outlook in everyday life. It ended the monopoly of news by corporate and state publishers and the control of learning by educational institutions managed by the prevailing ruling classes. It encouraged the streaming of live video by anyone to the entire world’s audience of mobile device owners that could never have been reached through printed media. It facilitated global communication and cooperation of scientists and enabled the launching of the international space station and the sending of multiple probes to the surface of Mars and beyond. It affected the quality and character of all published literature and information by subjecting authors and journalists to the purse and taste of billions of regular working people in both the advanced and lesser developed countries rather than to just the middle and upper classes. And, after speech and print, desktop publishing, online and social media provided a readier instrument for the dissemination of nonsense and disinformation than the world has ever known. 

Up to the present, the new media has not yet displaced print the way print eventually replaced the scribes. It is likely that printing on paper will continue to exist well into the future in a similar manner that the ancient art of pen-and-ink calligraphy has continued to exist alongside of print for centuries long after the last scriptorium was shut down. Meanwhile, electronic media such as e-books have contributed to a resurgence of printed books and, after the initial fascination with the electronic devices such as Amazon’s Kindle, the popularity and thirst of the public for books has increased, particularly following the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. While the forced separation of people from each other has driven up the use of digital tools such as online video meetings, events and gatherings, the self-isolation of reading a printed book has suddenly peaked again. 

Considerable effort has been made to replicate the experience of reading print media in electronic form. The advent of e-paper—the simulation of the look and feel of ink-on-paper which was pioneered at Xerox PARC in the 1970s (Nick Sheridon, Gyricon)—is an attempt to adapt two-dimensional digital display technologies to mimic the reading experience of the printed page. Since then, studies have shown that paper-based books yield superior reading retention to that of e-books. This is not so much because of the appearance of the printed page and its impact on visual perception as it is the tactile experience and spatial awareness connected with turning physical pages and navigating through a volume that contains a table of contents and an index.

In 2012, during a presentation at the DRUPA International Printing and Paper Expo in Düsseldorf, Germany, Benny Landa, the pioneer of digital printing who developed the Indigo Press in 1993, said the following:

I bet there is not one person in this hall that believes that two hundred years from now man will communicate by smearing pigment onto crushed trees. The question on everyone’s mind is when will printed media be replaced by digital media. … It will take many decades before printed media is replaced by whatever it will be … many decades is way over the horizon for us and our children.

Since Landa’s talk at DRUPA was part of the introduction of a new press with a digital printing method called he called nanography, he was emphasizing that we need to live and work in the here and now and not get too far ahead of ourselves. Landa’s nanographic press is based on advanced imaging technology that transfers a film of ink pigment to almost any printing surface which is multiple magnitudes thinner than either offset or other digital presses. By removing the water in the inkjet process, the fusing of toner to paper in the xerography and the petroleum-based vehicles that carry pigment in traditional offset presses, nanography dramatically reduces the cost of reproduction by focusing on the transfer ultra-fine droplets of pure pigment (nanoink) first to a blanket and then to the substrate. The aim of nanography is to keep paper-based media economically viable by providing a variable imaging digital press that can compete with the costs of offset lithography and accommodate the needs of the hybrid digital and analog commercial printing marketplace.

While print volumes are in decline, society is not yet ready to make a full transition to electronic media and move entirely away from paper communications. This is a serious dilemma facing those working in the printing industry who are trying to navigate the difficulties of maintaining a viable business in an environment where print remains in demand—in some segments it is growing—but overall, it is a shrinking percentage of economic activity. With greater numbers of people and resources being redirected to communications and marketing products in the more promising and profitable big tech and social media sectors, the printing industry is being starved of talent and economic resources.

Rather than trying to put a date on the moment of transition to a post-printing and fully-digital age of communications, the more relevant question is how it will be accomplished. Landa had it right when he said that today most people believe that two hundred years from now, man will no longer communicate by “smearing pigment onto crushed trees.” When the character of print media is put in these terms, the historical distance of this analog form of communications from the long-term potential of the present digital age becomes clearer. Still, no clear vision or roadmap has yet been articulated for what is required for civilization to elevate itself beyond the age of print.

It is difficult to discuss the moment of a complete progression of human communication methods from Gutenberg to Jobs without reference to the work of the Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan. Although McLuhan’s presentation lacked a coherent perspective and tended to drift about in what he called the “mosaic approach,” he made numerous prescient observations about the forms of media and the evolution of communications technology. Sharing elements of the theory of disruptive continuity, McLuhan focused in on the reciprocal interaction of the modes of communication—spoken, printed and electronic—with the broader societal economic, cultural and ideological transformations in world history. He emphasized the way these transitions each fundamentally altered man’s consciousness and self-image. He also recognized that there was presently a “clash” between what he called the culture of the “electric age” with that of the age of print. During an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1965, McLuhan explained how he saw technology as an extension of man’s natural capabilities:

If the wheel is an extension of feet, and tools of hands and arms, then electromagnetism seems to be in its technological manifestations an extension of our nerves and becomes mainly an information system. It is above all a feedback or looped system. But the peculiarity, you see, after the age of the wheel, you suddenly encounter the age of the circuit. The wheel pushed to an extreme suddenly acquires opposite characteristics. This seems to happen with a good many technologies— that if they get pushed to a very distant point, they reverse their characteristics.

Among McLuhan’s most significant contributions are found in his 1962 work, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographical Man. He discusses the reliance of primitive oral culture upon auditory perception and the elevation of vision above hearing in the culture of print. He wrote his study, “is intended to trace the ways in which the forms of experience and of mental outlook and expression have been modified, first by the phonetic alphabet and then by printing.” For McLuhan, the transformations from spoken word culture to typography and from typography to the electronic age extended beyond the mental organization of experience. In the Preface to The Gutenberg Galaxy, McLuhan summarized how he saw the interactive relationship of media forms with the whole social environment:

Any technology tends to create a new human environment. Script and papyrus created the social environment we think of in connection with the empires if the ancient world. … Technological environments are not merely passive containers of people but are active processes that reshape people and other technologies alike. In our time the sudden shift from the mechanical technology of the wheel to the technology of electric circuitry represents one of the major shifts of all historical time. Printing from movable types created a quite unexpected new environment—it created the public. Manuscript technology did not have the intensity or power of extension necessary to create publics on a national scale. What we have called “nations” in recent centuries did not, and could not, precede the advent of Gutenberg technology any more than they can survive the advent of electric circuitry with its power of totally involving all people in all other people.

As early as 1962—seven years before the creation of the Internet and nearly three decades before the birth of the World Wide Web—McLuhan anticipated the historical, far-reaching and revolutionary implications of the information and electronic age on the global organization of society. Although he eschewed determinism in any form, McLuhan pointed to the potential for electronic media to drive mankind beyond the national particularism which is rooted in the technical, socio-historical and scientific eras connected with the age of print. McLuhan later used the phrase “global village” to describe his vision of a higher form of non-national organization driven by the methods of human interaction that were brought on by “the advent of electric circuitry” and “totally involve all people in all other people.” For McLuhan, the transformation from the typographic and mechanical age to the electric age began with the telegraph in the 1830s. The new media created by the properties of electricity were expanded considerably with telephone, radio, television and the computer in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. McLuhan also wrote that the electronic media transformation revived oral culture and displaced the individualism and fragmentation of print culture with a “collective identity.”

McLuhan’s examination of the historical clash of the electronic media with the social environment of print culture and his prediction that a new collective human identity will be established from the transition to a global structure beyond the present fragmented national identities is highly significant. It points to the coming of the societal transformations that will be required for electronic media to thoroughly overcome print media as a completed historical process. In a similar way that Gutenberg’s invention spread across Europe and the world and planted the seeds of foundational transformation—in technology, politics and science—that developed over the next three and a half centuries, we are today likewise in the incubator of the new global transformation of electronic media. With this historically dynamic way of understanding the present, the worldwide spread of smartphones and social media to billions of people, despite national barriers placed upon the exchange of information as well as other differences such as language and ethnicity, humanity is being transformed with the emergence of a new homogeneous global culture. For this development to achieve its full potential, the social organization of man must be brought into alignment and there is no reason to believe that this adjustment from nations to a higher form of organization will take place with any less discontinuity than that of the period of world history that began with the rapid development of printing technology, the Enlightenment and the American and French Revolutions.

There are scientists and futurists who either proselytize or warn about the coming of the technological singularity, i.e., the moment in history when electronic media convergence and artificial intelligence will completely overtake the native capacities of humanity. The argument goes that these extensions of man will become irreversible, and civilization will be transformed in unanticipated ways either toward a utopian or dystopian future, depending on whether one supports or opposes the promises of the singularity. The twentieth century philosophical and intellectual movement known as transhumanism promotes the idea that the human condition will be dramatically improved through advanced technologies and cognitive enhancements. The dystopian opponents of transhumanist utopianism argue that technological advancements such as artificial intelligence should not be permitted to supplant the natural powers of the human mind on the grounds that they are morally compromising, and such a development poses an existential threat to society. Among these competing views, however, is the shared notion that the coming transformation of mankind will take place without a fundamental change in the social environment. Both the supporters and opponents of transhumanism envision that the extensions of man will evolve independently of any realignment of the economic or cultural foundations of society.

However, it is not possible to prognosticate about the future of communications technology outside of an understanding that the tendencies present in embryonic form nearly six centuries ago—particularly the democratization of information and knowledge that been vastly expanded in our time—bring with them powerful impulses for broad and fundamental societal change. In a world where every individual has the potential to communicate as both publisher and consumer of information with everyone else on the planet—regardless of geographic location, ethnicity, language or national origin—it appears entirely possible and necessary that new and higher forms of social organization must be achieved before this new media can carve a path to a truly post-printing age of mankind. While the existential threats are real, they do not come from the technology itself. The danger arises from the clash of the existing social structures against the expanding global integration of humanity. We have every reason to be optimistic about taking this next giant step into the future.

Concluded

Steve Case and “The Third Wave” of the Internet

Steve Case and The Third Wave

In 1980, Alvin Toffler published The Third Wave, a sequel to his 1970 best-seller Future Shock and an elaboration of his ideas about the information age and its stressful impact on society. In contrast to his first book, Toffler sought in The Third Wave to convince readers not to dread the future but instead to embrace the potential at the heart of the information revolution.

Alvin Toffler
Alvin Toffler

Actually, Alvin—and his co-author wife Heidi Toffler—were among the few writers to appreciate early on the transformative power of electronic communications. Long before the word “Internet” was used by anyone but a few engineers working for the US Department of Defense—and after reporting for Fortune magazine on foundational Third Wave companies like IBM, AT&T and Xerox—Toffler began to hypothesize about “information overload” and the disruptive force of networked data and communications upon manufacturing, business, government and the family.

"The Third Wave" (1980) by Alvin Toffler
“The Third Wave” (1980) by Alvin Toffler

For example, one can read in the The Third Wave, “Humanity faces a quantum leap forward. It faces the deepest social upheaval and creative restructuring of all time. Without clearly recognizing it, we are engaged in building a remarkable new civilization from the ground up. This is the meaning of the Third Wave.” Appearing today as a little excessive, these words would certainly have seemed in 1980 to be a wild exaggeration by two fanatical tech futurists.

But Alvin and Heidi were really onto something. More than 35 years later, who can deny the truth behind Toffler’s basic ideas about the global information revolution and its consequences? The Internet, networked PCs, the World Wide Web, wireless broadband, smartphones, social media and, ultimately, the Internet of Things have changed and are changing every aspect of society.

To his credit, Steve Case—who cofounded the early Internet company America Online—has written a new book called The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future that borrows its title from Toffler’s pioneering work. As Case explains in the preface, he was motivated by Toffler’s theories as a college student because they “completely transformed the way I thought about the world—and what I imagined for the future.”

Steve Case’s The Third Wave

First Wave Internet companies
First Wave Internet companies

In Steve Case’s book, “The Third Wave” refers to three phases of Internet development as opposed to Toffler’s stages of civilization. For Case, the first wave was the construction of the “on ramps”—including AOL and others like Sprint, Apple and Microsoft—to the information superhighway. The second wave was about building on top of first wave infrastructure by companies like Google, Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Twitter and others that have developed “software as a service” (SAS).

Case’s Third Wave of the Internet is the promise of connecting everything to everything else, i.e. the rebuilding of entire sectors of the economy with “smart” technologies. While the ideas surrounding what he calls the Internet of Everything are not new—Case does not claim to have originated the concept—the new book does discuss important barriers to the realization of the Third Wave of Internet connectivity and how to overcome them.

Second Wave Internet companies
Second Wave Internet companies

Case argues that Third Wave companies will require a new set of principles in order to be successful, that following the playbook of Second Wave companies will not do. He writes, “The playbook they need, instead, is one that worked during the First Wave, when the Internet was still young and skepticism was still high; when the barriers to entry were enormous, and when partnerships were a necessity to reaching your customers; when the regulatory system was coming to grips with a new reality and struggling to figure out the appropriate path forward.”

In much of the book, Case reviews his ideas about the transformation of the health care, education and food industries by applying the culture of innovation and ambition for change that is commonly found in Silicon Valley. However, he cautions that current Second Wave models of venture capital investment, views about the role of government and aversion to collaboration among entrepreneurs threaten to stall or kill Third Wave change before it can get started.

The story of AOL

In some ways, the most interesting aspects of Case’s book deal with the origin, growth and decline of America Online (AOL). Case gives a candid explication of the trials and tribulations of his innovative dial-up Internet company from 1983 to 2003. Case explains that prior to the achievement of significant consumer (27.6 million users by 2002) and Wall Street ($222 billion market cap by 1999) success, AOL and its precursors went through a series of near death experiences.

Steve Case in 1987 before the founding of America Online
Steve Case in 1987 before the founding of America Online

For example, he tells the story of a deal that he signed with Apple in 1987 that was cancelled by the Cupertino-based company during implementation. Case had sold Apple customer service executives on a partnership with his then Quantum Computer Services to build an online support system called Apple Link Personal Edition that would be offered to customers as a software add-on. Disagreements between Apple and Quantum over how to sell the product to computer users ultimately killed the project.

Facing the termination of the investment funding that was tied to the $5 million agreement, Case and the other founders decided to sue Apple for breach of contract. Acknowledging their liability to Quantum, Apple agreed to pay $3 million to “tear up the contract.” Starting over with their new source of cash, Case and his partners restarted their company as America Online and they made an approach directly to consumers to sign up for their service.

This tale and others reinforces one of the key themes of Case’s book: Third Wave entrepreneurs will need to persevere through “the long slog” to success.

The January 24, 2000 cover of Time magazine with Steve Case and Jerry Levin announcing the AOL-Time Warner merger.
The January 24, 2000 cover of Time magazine with Steve Case and Jerry Levin announcing the AOL-Time Warner merger.

The end of Steve Case’s relationship with AOL is also a lesson in the leadership skills required for Third Wave success. In a chapter entitled “Matter of Trust” (the longest of the book), Steve Case relives the story of the merger/acquisition of Time Warner with/by AOL. It is a cautionary tale of both the excesses of Wall Street valuations during the dot com boom and the crisis of traditional media companies in the face of Third Wave innovation.

Case says that while the combination of AOL with Time Warner in 2000—the largest corporate merger in history up to that point—made sense at the time, two months later the dot com bubble burst and the company lost eighty percent of its value within a year. This was followed by a series of leadership battles that proved there were deep seated feelings of “personal mistrust and lingering resentments” among top Time Warner executives over the business potential of the Internet and the up-start start-up called AOL.

Steve Case writes that, although the dot com crash was certainly a factor, “It came down to emotions and egos and, ultimately, the culture itself. That something with the potential to be the first trillion-dollar company could end up losing $200 billion in value should tell you just how important the people factor is. It doesn’t really matter what the plan is if you can’t get your people aligned around achieving the same objectives.”

What now?

For those of us that were in the traditional media business—i.e. print, television and radio—the word “disruption” hardly describes the impact of the Internet over the past three decades. When companies like AOL were getting started with their modems and dial-up connections, most of us were looking pretty good. We had little time or interest in the tacky little AOL “You’ve Got Mail” audio message. As we reluctantly embraced IBM, Apple and Microsoft as partners in our front office and production operations, we were later making smug remarks about the absurdity of eBay and Amazon as legitimate business ideas.

Internet of Things
IoT is at the center of Case’s Third Wave of innovation.

Steve Case’s book represents a timely warning to the enterprises and business leaders of today who similarly dismiss the notions of IoT.  He points to Uber and Airbnb and shows that the hospitality and transportation industries are being right now turned on their sides by this new wave of information-enabled “sharing” businesses.

Actually, Case is an unlikely spokesman for the next wave of innovation having personally made out quite well (his net worth stands at $1.37 billion) despite the shipwreck that became AOL Time Warner. If he had been born twenty-five years later, Case could possibly have been another Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and rode the Second Wave of the Internet (Zuckerberg got his start in coding by hacking AOL Instant Messenger) over the ruins of the dot com bust.

But that was then and this is now. Case has decided to commit himself to investment in present day entrepreneurships through his Revolution Growth venture capital fund. His book is kind of a roadmap for those who want to learn from his experience and bravely launch into the Third Wave of the Internet and build start-ups of a new kind. As Alvin Toffler wrote in Future Shock, “If we do not learn from history, we shall be compelled to relive it. True. But if we do not change the future, we shall be compelled to endure it. And that could be worse.”

Books, e-books and the e-paper chase

Last November Amazon opened its first retail book store in Seattle near the campus of the University of Washington. More than two decades after it pioneered online book sales—and initiated the e-commerce disruption of the retail industry—the $550 billion company seemed to be taking a step backward with its “brick and mortar” Amazon Books.

Amazon Books opened in Seattle on November 3, 2015
Amazon opened its first retail book store in Seattle on November 3, 2015

However, Amazon launched its store concept with a nod to traditional consumer shopping habits, i.e. the ability to “kick the tires.” Amazon knows very well that many customers like to browse the shelves in bookstores and fiddle with electronic gadgets like the Kindle, Fire TV and Echo before they make buying decisions.

So far, the Seattle book store has been successful and Amazon has plans to open more locations. Some unique features of the Amazon.com buying experience have been extended to the book store. Customer star ratings and reviews are posted near book displays; shoppers are encouraged to use the Amazon app and scan bar codes to check prices.

Amazon’s book store initiative was also possibly motivated by the persistence and strength of the print book market. Despite the rapid rise of e-books, print books have shown a resurgence of late. Following a sales decline of 15 million print books in 2013 to just above 500 million units, the past two years have seen an increase to 560 million in 2014 and 570 million in 2015. Meanwhile, the American Booksellers Association reported a substantial increase in independent bookstores over the past five years (1,712 member stores in 2,227 locations in 2015, up from 1,410 in 1,660 locations in 2010).

Print books and e-books

After rising rapidly since 2008, e-book sales have stabilized at between 25% and 30% of total book sales
After rising rapidly since 2008, e-book sales have stabilized at between 25% and 30% of total book sales

The ratio of e-book to print book sales appears to have leveled off at around 1 to 3. This relationship supports recent public perception surveys and learning studies that show the reading experience and information retention properties of print books are superior to that of e-books.

The reasons for the recent uptick in print sales and the slowing of e-book expansion are complex. Changes in the overall economy, adjustments to bookstore inventory from digital print technologies and the acclimation of consumers to the differences between the two media platforms have created a dynamic and rapidly shifting landscape.

As many analysts have insisted, it is difficult to make any hard and fast predictions about future trends of either segment of the book market. However, two things are clear: (1) the printed book will undergo little further evolution and (2) the e-book is headed for rapid and dramatic innovation.

Amazon launched the e-book revolution in 2007 with the first Kindle device. Although digital books were previously available in various computer file formats and media types like CD-ROMs for decades, e-books connected with Amazon’s Kindle took off in popularity beginning in 2008. The most important technical innovation of the Kindle—and a major factor in its success—was the implementation of the e-paper display.

Distinct from backlit LCD displays on most mobile devices and personal computers, e-paper displays are designed to mimic the appearance of ink on paper. Another important difference is that the energy requirements of e-paper devices are significantly lower than LCD-based systems. Even in later models that offer automatic back lighting for low-light reading conditions, e-paper devices will run for weeks on a single charge while most LCD systems require a recharge in less than 24-hours.

Nick Sheridon and Gyricon

The theory behind the Kindle’s ink-on-paper emulation was originated in the 1970s at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California by Nick Sheridon. Sheridon developed his concepts while working to overcome limitations with the displays of the Xerox Alto, the first desktop computer. The early monitors could only be viewed in darkened office environments because of insufficient brightness and contrast.

Nick Sheridon and his team at Xerox PARC invented Gyricon in 1974, a thin layer of transparent plastic composed of bichromal beads that rotate to create an image
Nick Sheridon and his team at Xerox PARC invented Gyricon in 1974, a thin layer of transparent plastic composed of bichromal beads that rotate with changes in voltage to create an image on the surface

Sheridon sought to develop a display that could match the contrast and readability of black ink on white paper. Along with his team of engineers at Xerox, Sheridon developed Gyricon, a substrate with thousands of microscopic plastic beads—each of which were half black and half white—suspended in a thin and transparent silicon sheet. Changes in voltage polarity caused either the white or black side of the beads to rotate up and display images and text without backlighting or special ambient light conditions.

After Xerox cancelled the Alto project in the early 1980s, Sheridon took his Gyricon technology in a new direction. By the late 1980s, he was working on methods to manufacture a new digital display system as part of the “paperless office.” As Sheridon explained later, “There was a need for a paper-like electronic display—e-paper! It needed to have as many paper properties as possible, because ink on paper is the ‘perfect display.’”

In 2000, Gyricon LLC was founded as a subsidiary of Xerox to develop commercially viable e-paper products. The startup opened manufacturing facilities in Ann Arbor, Michigan and developed several products including e-signage that utilized Wi-Fi networking to remotely update messaging. Unfortunately, Xerox shut down the entity in 2005 due to financial problems.

Pioneer of e-paper Nick Sheridon
Pioneer of e-paper, Nicholas Sheridan

Among the challenges Gyricon faced were making a truly paper-like material that had sufficient contrast and resolution while keeping manufacturing costs low. Sheridan maintained that e-paper displays would only be viable economically if units were sold for less than $100 so that “nearly everyone could have one.”

As Sheridon explained in a 2009 interview: “The holy grail of e-paper will be embodied as a cylindrical tube, about 1 centimeter in diameter and 15 to 20 centimeters long, that a person can comfortably carry in his or her pocket. The tube will contain a tightly rolled sheet of e-paper that can be spooled out of a slit in the tube as a flat sheet, for reading, and stored again at the touch of a button. Information will be downloaded—there will be simple user interface—from an overhead satellite, a cell phone network, or an internal memory chip.”

E Ink

By the 1990s competitors began entering the e-paper market. E Ink, founded in 1998 by a group of scientists and engineers from MIT’s Media Lab including Russ Wilcox, developed a concept similar to Sheridon’s. Instead of using rotating beads with white and black hemispheres, E Ink introduced a method of suspending microencapsulated cells filled with both black and white particles in a thin transparent film. Electrical charges to the film caused the black or white particles to rise to the top of the microcapsules and create the appearance of a printed page.

E Ink cofounder Russ Wilcox
E Ink cofounder Russ Wilcox

E Ink’s e-paper technology was initially implemented by Sony in 2004 in the first commercially available e-reader called LIBRIe. In 2006, Motorola integrated an E Ink display in its F3 cellular phone. A year later, Amazon included E Ink’s 6-inch display in the first Amazon Kindle which became by far the most popular device of its kind.

Kindle Voyage (2014) and Kindle Paperwhite (2015) with the latest e-paper displays (Carta) from E ink
Kindle Voyage (2014) and Kindle Paperwhite (2015) with the latest e-paper displays (Carta) from E ink

Subsequent generations of Kindle devices have integrated E Ink displays with progressively improved contrast, resolution and energy consumption. By 2011, the third generation Kindle included touch screen capability (the original Kindle had an integrated hardware keyboard for input).

The current edition of the Kindle Paperwhite (3rd Generation) combines back lighting and a touch interface with E Ink Carta technology and a resolution of 300 pixels per inch. Many other e-readers such as the Barnes & Noble Nook, the Kobo, the Onyx Boox and the PocketBook also use E Ink products for their displays.

Historical parallel

The quest to replicate, as closely as possible in electronic form, the appearance of ink on paper is logical enough. In the absence of a practical and culturally established form, the new media naturally strives to emulate that which came before it. This process is reminiscent of the evolution of the first printed books. For many decades, print carried over the characteristics of the books that were hand-copied by scribes.

It is well known that Gutenberg’s “mechanized handwriting” invention (1440-50) sought to imitate the best works of the Medieval monks. The Gutenberg Bible, for instance, has two columns of print text while everything else about the volume—paper, size, ornamental drop caps, illustrations, gold leaf accents, binding, etc.—required techniques that preceded the invention of printing. Thus, the initial impact of Gutenberg’s system was an increase in the productivity of book duplication and the displacement of scribes; it would take some time for the implications of the new process to work its way through the function, form and content of books.

Ornamented title page of the Gutenberg Bible printed in 1451
Ornamented title page of the Gutenberg Bible printed in 1451

More than a half century later—following the spread of Gutenberg’s invention to the rest of Europe—the book began to evolve dramatically and take on attributes specific to printing and other changes taking place in society. For example, by the first decade of the 1500s, books were no longer stationary objects to be read in exclusive libraries and reading rooms of the privileged few. As their cost dropped, editions became more plentiful and literacy expanded, books were being read everywhere and by everybody.

By the middle 1500s, both the form and content of books became transformed. To facilitate their newfound portability, the size of books fell from the folio (14.5” x 20”) to the octavo dimension (7” x 10.5”). By the beginning of the next century, popular literature—the first European novel is widely recognized as Cervantes’ Don Quixote of 1605—supplanted verse and classic texts. New forms of print media developed such as chapbooks, broadsheets and newspapers.

Next generation e-paper

It seems clear that the dominance of LCD displays on computers, mobile and handheld devices is a factor in the persistent affinity of the public for print books. Much of the technology investment and advancement of the past decade—coming from companies such as Apple Computer—has been been committed to computer miniaturization, touch interface and mobility, not the transition from print to electronic media. While first decade e-readers have made important strides, most e-books are still being read on devices that are visually distant from print books, impeding a more substantial migration to the new media.

Additionally, most current e-paper devices have many unpaper-like characteristics such as relatively small size, inflexibility, limited bit-depth and the inability to write ton them. All current model e-paper Kindles, for example, are limited to 6-inch displays with 16 grey levels beneath a heavy and fragile layer of glass and no support for handwriting.

The Sony Digital Paper System (DPT-S1) is based on E Ink’s Mobius e-paper display technology: 13.3” format, flexible and supports stylus handwriting
The Sony Digital Paper System (DPT-S1) is based on E Ink’s Mobius e-paper display technology: 13.3” format, flexible and supports stylus handwriting

A new generation of e-paper systems is now being developed that overcome many of these limitations. In 2014, Sony released its Digital Paper System (DPT-S1) that is a letter-size e-reader and e-notebook (for $1,100 at launch and currently selling for $799). The DPT-S1 is based on E Ink’s Mobius display, a 13.3” thin film transistor (TFT) platform that is flexible and can accept handwriting from a stylus.

Since it does not have any glass, the new Sony device weighs 12.6 oz or about half of a similar LCD-based tablet. With the addition of stylus-based handwriting capability, the device functions like an electronic notepad and, meanwhile, notes can be written in the margins of e-books and other electronic documents.

These advancements and others show that e-paper is positioned for a renewed surge into things that have yet to be conceived. Once a flat surface can be curved or even folded and then made to transform itself into any image—including a color image—at any time and at very low cost and very low energy consumption, then many things are possible like e-wall paper, e-wrapping paper, e-milk cartons and e-price tags. The possibilities are enormous.