Jeff Koopersmith on the messy plethora of electronic readers -- and the need for a solution that feels like you're reading something.

There are over 200 million people in the United States alone that are inured to reading newspapers, cutting coupons from them, tearing out recipes from them, circling articles in them and more.

The element that electronic media forgets - heavily detrimental to its profits are two actions - "Flipping" and "Turning". I’ve been using computers since 1985 – the same year MIT developed its Media Lab. So I’m asking Joi Ito, the Director, to help me to not make as much of a transition as Kindle et al wants me to. I have an Android, Kindle, Kindle Fire HD, IPad, and even a new "Surface" from Microsoft. Yet, I’m still miserably ordering hard copies of all the magazines and newspapers I could choose to get electronically. I think whole bunches of other people are doing the same worldwide. 

Dr. Picard, we’re just not ready!

While I agree with most experts in electronic publishing that the youngest of us will accept the no flip-the-page, and not feeling the current page as you turn to next, there is something in a couple hundred million of us - and in another 4 billion around the world that will not easily give up paper - or something very much like it - simply for a single screen that only seems to work for their children or grandchildren as a relaxing method to read, scan, check the index, and more.

I own a small publishing house. We are rolling out a new series of children’s books. These books will be printed and bound with "Heirloom Quality" which means they will be printed in full color at high resolution on wonderful matte papers of extraordinary paper. They will be bound in leather and gold-stamped, and will be put in beautiful slip cases lined in silk and have another multi-volume case in which to store the set. Each book will also come with an electronic version that is usable on almost any device should the owner prefer to do so someday - or even now.

The fact that we are publishing on paper and calling our books heirlooms is a nod that we understand fully that someday most of us who love and rely on paper yet, will be dead within ten to fifty years. By that time something will happen that will increase the ease of use of electronic magazines and newspapers. There is no question about this. If it doesn't - well, the living, it appears,  will have no choice.

However, there is a 5 billion person market for e-paper that is the size of the New York Post or even the New York Times, and/or the size of Elle Magazine. So why do we see only these little e-paper manufacturers making little e-paper screens - THAT DO NOT FLIP OR TURN using your thumb and forefinger. Is each page so expensive that 50 of them would be an outlandish cost for most of us? I doubt it - because anything with a potential market for billions of people is almost never too expensive.

So here is the list for someone, anyone, at MIT:

1. Develop a "paper" that feels like paper - even looks like it (but I think that's probably not possible - the feel is thing - even if it's thick paper. We can call it Plaper- (play-per).
2. Try to make Plaper thin enough so that it can fit at least 50 pages in a nice tabloid sized "book”. That way it will fit magazines into it as well as larger newspapers - like the Sunday Times - well maybe not the Sunday Times. Don't let the Plaper take "inserts".... or make it thicker for that annoyance - Well okay, your choice and the Sulzberger's option.
3. Make certain Plaper can be updated over broadband - wireless or not.
4. Color would be nice - but it can wait until the black and white is great. After all we've all been reading mostly black and white newspapers and books for a few hundred years.
5. Allow the Plaper or Plagazine (sorry) to "dock" with a very small, I mean a very small connector and have the connector carry my subscription information to the provider. Don't make me enter things like passwords I can't recall, or other silly information. This will allow personalization of advertising but WILL NOT require "log ins"    The "Plaper" CAN require a plug-in, but it would be nice to equip the "Plaper" to be "set and changeable" and of course rechargeable on it's own so I can read it under a tree, or on a picnic table. In short it can freeze its content on each page if I want it to.
6. Do not put it in a strong binder if possible. Once that day's or minute's paper is downloaded allow me to flip the sheets, even set sheets aside for further reading. Maybe using a ring binder would work to electronically slip the content into the Plaper from the rings to the correct page?

I think that's it for now.

Later you guys and gals at MIT might add a paper that can talk to me if I am too old to read.

Oh, one more thing; could you make Plaper smell sorta' like paper?