Read a book on paper? That’s just so last year

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/12/2009 (6016 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I think all of us, especially those of us who love to read, should be a lot more grateful for the wonders of modern technology.

Thanks to recent technological breakthroughs, readers can forget the pain and anguish that comes from getting a nasty paper cut and instead concentrate on the pain and anguish that comes from getting electrocuted when they drop their modern technology in the bathtub.

At least, that’s the way it worked for me. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’d like to start today by confessing that, when it comes to reading, I’m something of a fossil, an out-of-date weenie whose failure to keep up with the times is a constant source of embarrassment to his college-age children.

Take magazines, for example. You are going to laugh, but my technique for reading magazines involved (a) going to a store and picking out a magazine; and (b) taking the magazine home where I would manually flip through the pages, skipping over advertisements unless, in a sincere effort to appeal to consumers in my socio-economic class, they featured bikini models.

But that trusted system has gone out the window thanks to a technological advance called “augmented reality,” which enables items in a magazine to spring to life and begin talking and moving around on your computer screen in a manner so startling it causes coffee to spurt from your nose and soak your keyboard.

I became acquainted with this new development when I bought the December issue of Esquire magazine, the one featuring bad-boy actor Robert Downey Jr. on the cover sitting on a box bearing a mysterious coded marker.

The way it works is, you go to Esquire‘s website, download their augmented reality program, hold the marker on the cover in front of your computer’s camera, then spurt coffee as Robert Downey Jr. magically pops up on your screen and begins shrieking at you. The magazine is peppered with coded markers, which act like keys, unlocking video and pictures and sounds and drawings that turn an ordinary magazine into a living, breathing, moving, talking magazine.

Within minutes, you and your family will find yourselves huddled around a computer screen, clutching a magazine and hypnotized by car advertisements you would never watch on TV in a million years, even if terrorists were pointing loaded guns at your heads.

So, yes, I love this technology. I’m especially looking forward to the historic day when augmented reality achieves its ultimate goal — bringing Sports Illustrated‘s swimsuit issue to life. Until then, we need to spend some time learning how to read books like modern, civilized persons. My system for reading books was even more antiquated than my system for reading magazines. It involved these key steps:

1) Selecting a book;

2) Jumping into a bath with my book;

3) Starting to read via the technique of flipping pages with my fingers;

4) Falling asleep;

5) Dropping my book in the bath, lurching out of a deep sleep, frantically fishing my book out of the tub, placing its sopping-wet pages on top of the hot-air vent in the bathroom, then waiting several hours until the blasts of hot air cause the book to puff up to the general size and shape of a Standard poodle.

This system always worked for me. At least it did until recently, when my buddy, Bob, lent me his newest high-tech gadget — the Kindle electronic-book reader from Amazon, one of the hottest gifts in Canada this Christmas.

Armed with the Kindle, readers no longer have to waste time physically turning pages on something as crude as a book. Instead, they can waste time pressing buttons on a tiny electronic device and squinting trying to find an angle where it is possible to see what’s printed on a tiny screen.

The best thing about the new eBook reader is the fact its tiny brain can hold 1,500 books and there are about 300,000 titles available online in Canada. What does this mean? It means modern parents can climb in the tub, start reading their eBooks and they won’t have to get back out until after their kids have graduated, got married and started families of their own.

So, please, do not tell me technology isn’t making life better for all of us. I’m especially grateful to my buddy Bob for lending me his book reader. I plan on giving it back as soon as it finishes drying on the hot-air vent.

It’s puffing up quite nicely at the moment.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca