The original note, as written at the time
Books whose pages are flexible digital screens, each with a separate category of content. So as a reader flips through they can pore over one leaf in the same way that one would swipe up and down a standard tablet today.
Ongoing development
Books whose pages are flexible digital screens, each carrying a separate category of content, so that a reader flipping through can pore over one leaf in the way one swipes up and down a tablet today.
The difference from a tablet is that the pages are simultaneous. On a screen, one thing is visible and the rest have to be summoned. In a book, six things are present and the hand can find them without looking — which is why a reader can hold a place, check a note and return, all without losing the thread.
Giving each leaf its own category is the specific idea worth keeping. Page one is the text. Page two is the figures. Page three is the notes. Page four is the references. That is exactly how a scholar uses a printed book, with fingers in three places, and it is what a tablet cannot do.
The physical form does the rest. Leaves have thickness, so a flip has momentum and a location you can feel. A stack has a left and a right. Opening at a bookmark is a gesture, not a menu.
The engineering lives and dies at the spine, as it always has. Flexible displays tolerate a bend; they do not tolerate ten thousand bends at a crease, with a conductor running through it, in a bag. Until that is solved this remains a drawing — but it is a drawing worth having, because it tells you what to build when the hinge is solved.
What a book has that a screen cannot fake is that it shows you how much is left, in the thickness of the remaining pages. That is information about length that no scroll bar communicates.