Reading the future: Part 2 of 2

Last week in Part 1, I talked about the Espresso book machine: what it is, what it does, and its impact on the modern publishing industry. This week I'd like to suggest a new application for the Espresso that has the potential to dramatically change the print media landscape, as well as the nature of the user's relationship to the product.

The Espresso book machine is currently an awkwardly functional item. If you are looking for a rare or out-of-print book, it's invaluable. However, if you're shopping for anything else in the book store, as most customers are, the Espresso is little more than a grossly over-priced inkjet that can't really help you.

Outside of a perhaps woefully small niche, the book machine has little to offer in its current incarnation. But this is a first generation idea. Down the line, a few versions from now, if we're lucky, we'll see some innovative thinking. To see what is exciting in the future, though, I'm going to take a quick look back into the past.

Consider the Ford Model T. The automobile was priced way beyond the average consumer's means. It lacked the support infrastructure it really required for optimal usage. It even had trouble driving on America's mostly unpaved roads. With all those factors considered, the Model T was a difficult machine to own. That said, the Model T was the harbinger of great things to come. Ford sought to fill a need in the consumer landscape that most thought was (at best) a luxury, or (at worst) a dangerous fancy of the wealthy.

Ford filled this need with a complicated and innovative device, the bleeding edge of technology. In time, the little black buggy's descendants would become the most iconic of American tools, an irreplaceable device used everyday by most adult Americans.

The Espresso book machine has the potential to fill this same roll in our culture. By simply re-aligning the focus of the device, its usefulness to the average consumer is multiplied exponentially.

Imagine stepping into a book store, or a corner deli, or up to a sidewalk newsstand, and instead of grabbing a paper from the stack, you order one up built to your specifications. You don't read the Travel section because it gets you down every time you leaf through it, for example. Have no use for the classifieds right now? Wish you had some of your paper's online blog content in your print edition? With custom print-on-demand at point of sale you could add or subtract the sections of your choosing. Every customer could be the editor-in-chief of their own private international news organization.

For years newspapers have been wondering how they can stay ahead of the 24-hour news cycle curve that the internet created. Today newspapers are out of date by the time they arrive in a reader's hands. By printing at point of sale from a networked device, the content is live and updated until the very moment a customer purchases it.

Subscribing customers could be issued "smart swipe" (or RFID) cards that tell print-on-demand devices exactly which material to spit out. If you wanted to make a change to your daily read, you could update it online like your Netflix queue or your DVR program.

By synching with your RSS, reader the device could recognize which blogs you've already read in the day, and save paper by not printing duplicate information. Or, alternately, it could print out the comment threads those blogs generate during the day for your evening review.

...It sounds like a lot of wasted paper, though, doesn't it, printing out all those articles that you normally would just read on the screen? But consider in comparison the amount of unsold daily newspapers generated every day. By only printing the material consumers need we cut out an astounding quantity of unsold waste.

Printing on demand at the point of sale has other benefits. Costs to publishers are reduced even further by cutting out expensive shipping from the equation. Fewer trucks on the road means lower fuel emissions, something everyone can benefit from even if they never touch one of these devices.

By observing the content customers are purchasing and printing, advertisers can better tailor their messaging. If you're reading a host of content for new mothers, there's no sense in serving up ads for denture fixative. This level of demographic readership knowledge is the holy grail of print advertising. Couple real-time customer information with a google-esque pay-per-ad-served sales model and you've just re-engineered the newspaper business model into a streamlined modern engine.

This revolution need not be limited to the daily rags, magazines, comic books, trade publications could all benefit from this technology. Imagine the ability to purchase academic journals, which are traditionally only available by expensive subscription, for sale on any street corner at a fraction of the current price.

Complaining that internet technology is killing the publishing medium is like starving to death in a car because you didn't know how to turn the key and drive to the store. You have to leverage every tool available to you (and maybe invent some new ones) to stay ahead in the consumer market. Look at the things that aren't working, and figure out what good you CAN get out of them and what must be changed to make them work.

The only thing that beats "free" in the rock, paper, scissors game of capitalism is "convenient," and "convenient" is about the only thing the Espresso book machine has going for it right now. As it stands right now, the Espresso is not the device that can save print media, but it may be prophet for a better time coming. And after a few years of development, who knows?