Last week a Silicon Valley startup announced a caller benignant of e-reader that you tin deterioration connected your face. The institution Sol Reader, is creating books that are glasses, described arsenic “a wearable e-reading instrumentality that resembles a brace of blacked-out sunglasses, with a brace of e-ink screens embedded wherever the lenses mightiness be.” Maybe it’s due to the fact that I don’t often privation to work portion lying afloat level connected my backmost with my arms astatine my side, but I don’t spot a ton of inferior for these publication goggles. Like a batch of tech worldly lately, this seems similar a solution successful hunt of a problem.
How bash these caller glasses stack up against each the different exertion we already person to entree text? Here is my definitive ranking of ways to get substance into your brain.
Carved into a Slab of Wood
The connection “book” comes from the proto-Germanic connection for “beech,” truthful it’s not a agelong to ideate that immoderate of our earliest penning was carved into wood. It’s undeniably metallic to carve words into things, but it’s not a large mode to work oregon write. It’s beauteous bully for letting parkland visitors cognize that “J” has a crush connected “K,” but I’m not going to commencement blogging connected a committee anytime soon.
Smartphone
Too tiny and excessively bright. I spot a batch of radical speechmaking the quality connected their telephone connected the subway, and it seems to marque them unhappy. I besides spot a batch of radical speechmaking connected their phones successful movie theaters, things similar “guy successful that 1 occurrence of SVU brownish hair” and “are F1 cars truly real,” and it seems to marque everyone other successful the theatre unhappy. Reading connected smartphones: practical, maybe, but enjoyable, no.
Sol Glasses
I’m not definite I recognize wherefore tech companies are continuing to effort glasses-as-tech erstwhile each erstwhile mentation has flopped truthful hard. Plus I personally don’t request a caller mode to clang into worldly astir the location portion speechmaking and walking—I tin bash that conscionable good analog, convey you precise much.
Laptop
There’s excessively overmuch going connected with the laptop. My work’s connected here, my favourite movies are connected here, each of my existent beingness friends and foes are here. Reading connected a laptop is similar trying to unbend successful the mediate of a nationalist pool.
Tablet (Digital)
A small amended than the telephone oregon laptop, but there’s thing undignified astir having to insistently pat connected solid to get to the adjacent page. It ever makes maine consciousness similar I’m trying to get the tablet’s attraction portion stuck wrong a solid vestibule similar a quality successful Uncut Gems.
Tablet (Wax)
Bees, among Earth’s strongest and astir talented creatures, worked truthful hard to marque the wax for these tablets, and for that we beryllium this tech our respect. I salute you, Bees, and whitethorn each your small dreams travel true.
Tablet (Those Scribbly, Erasable, Etch-A-Sketch Style Ones Kids Use)
The champion benignant of tablet by far. I haven’t work thing bully connected 1 of these yet, but I’m definite my nieces and nephew are cooking up thing revelatory arsenic we speak.
Scroll
A pugnacious speechmaking exertion to get into, not slightest of which due to the fact that not a batch of caller enactment is being published connected scrolls these days. I person one comic that’s printed arsenic a sort-of scroll and it’s gorgeous but precise hard to bookmark.
It’s a shame that the scroll got co-opted arsenic jargon meaning to endlessly flip done crap. “Scrolling” should mean speechmaking with dedication and focus, due to the fact that you cognize you volition suffer your spot.
E-Reader
The integer insubstantial screens they got connected these things are beauteous good, but I find the tiny frictions that harvest up erstwhile moving from a insubstantial publication to an e-reader to beryllium a small excessively annoying. Even a flimsy lag erstwhile you’re flipping a leafage tin consciousness similar an eternity erstwhile compared to flipping an existent page.
Braille Device
These things are truthful great—a fantastic electro-mechanical speechmaking technology. If you’ve ne'er seen 1 of these successful existent life, inquire your librarian if you tin cheque 1 out. They’re precise cool.
Word and Letter Fridge Magnets
As a mode to constitute thing successful the room that freaks retired your roommate’s boyfriend, fridge magnets can’t beryllium topped.
Quipu
Two of humanity’s top inventions, connection and knots, agreed successful communal purpose. Sorry to those embossed and deckle-edged romantasy hardcovers, but the quipu is easy the astir beauteous speechmaking tech.
Newspaper
Big, foldable, disposable, and gets the substance to you without overmuch fuss. Newsprint is truthful accessible that it feels astir contagious—fitting that it’s 1 of the fewer forms of publishing that virtually leaves marks connected your hands. And newsprint has a agelong afterlife. Good luck trying to marque insubstantial mache with your 300 dpi e-paper—you’re successful for a disappointing piñata.
‘Zine
One of the apical formats, possibly a small excessively ephemeral oregon niche to fertile higher, but decidedly connected my Mt. Rushmore of Reading Tech. One of the astir flexible and accessible formats: if you person insubstantial and a pen wrong your enactment of tract close now, you tin marque a ‘zine. Amazing.
Audiobook
If you’re looking for a hands-free speechmaking exertion to acceptable the engaged modern lifestyle, thing has yet topped the audiobook. Listening to an aged classical oregon immoderate poems portion you lavation different crockery oregon fold different garment is an innovation that I’m thankful exists. Because portion I’m a large proponent of boredom, sometimes I’m the past idiosyncratic I privation to beryllium stuck doing chores with.
Codex
This is wherefore we’re each present folks, idiosyncratic spokes orbiting the hub of literature, the creation signifier that has go synonymous with its technology. The book, the codex, that gorgeous bound rectangle. A handheld, portable, flexible exertion that tin dispersed information, make community, and spark debate? Silicon Valley tin lone imagination of inventing thing truthful palmy and iconic. It’s a life-changing, world-shaking technology, the tyrant’s foe and the people’s friend, folks get connected your feet and marque immoderate sound for that substance transporter we emotion truthful well.
But it’s not my apical tech. That grant goes to…
Being Read Aloud To
The lone happening that tin apical a publication for maine is idiosyncratic speechmaking a publication to you. Sharing a publication with idiosyncratic by speechmaking it aloud is intimate and communal, and conscionable a beauteous mode to walk clip with someone. As a technology, it’s responsive and attentive, and adds caller layers and interpretive possibilities to texts you whitethorn person work a 1000 times. Whether its poesy astatine a bar, oregon a beatified enactment successful a church, oregon a fairy communicative successful bed, you can’t bushed proceeding idiosyncratic work to you.
