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Book as peripheral device.

There’s a lot of talk that technology is going to kill the book, eBooks specifically. It’s true that physical books are still pretty low-tech, but that doesn’t mean they have to stay that way. Maybe there could be a future where books are actually computer peripherals. If so, the prototype Elektrobiblioteka is a teaser.

Polish for Electrolibrary, Elektrobiblioteka is a half-art installation, half-peripheral designed by Waldek Wegrzyn that lets a user actually control a computer with a book. Granted, it’s no ordinary book; it’s loaded with all kinds of specialized circuitry. Likewise, you don’t use it to navigate your desktop; you use it to interact with a very specific program. Of course, this very specifically designed application is really the only way this coupling makes sense, but the result has potential. MORE