Children's Technology Review. Reading Between the Lines – Stabletalk. From early alphabetic scrawls on papyrus and tree bark 5,000 years ago, to Retina Displays and multimedia interactivity; the book has certainly had an interesting history. Last summer, Amazon reached a memorable tipping point for their online store, selling 143 Kindle-compatible ebooks for every 100 hardcover titles they shipped. People have been predicting this massive shift from analog to digital reading for at least forty years, but that’s not to say that there haven’t been fumbles (however innovative) along the way.
The basic morphology of the Kindle draws significant inspiration from Alan Kay’s DoD-funded 1968 Dynabook concept; and even Kay says we haven’t arrived at a desirable enough design yet, from a software perspective.