Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium

4:15PM, Wednesday, January 20, 1999
NEC Auditorium, Gates Computer Science Building B03

The Future of Books

Martin Eberhard, Aleksey Novicov, Pat Holt, Gary Gach
About the talk:
Recently several companies have begun shipping ELECTRONIC BOOKS, portable display devices in a book-sizd form factor with the infrastructure to download book files. Microsoft has recently announced ClearType, a technique for improving LCD displays via sub-pixel interpolation, and has claimed patent protection for the technique. Everyone seems to agree that E-Books are going to be a killer app, but like many killer apps, there are real questions of utility and acceptance which will have to be answered and demonstrated.

This Colloquium will present a panel of publishing experts which will address some of the important issues. The panel members will be

Martin Eberhard, CEO of Nuovomedia

Aleksey Novicov, VP of Development at Softbook Press

Pat Holt, ex-Chronicle book editor editor, publishing iconoclast, and publisher of Holt Uncensored, a weekley publishing e-mail column; and Gary Gach, poet and author of Writers.COM and Internet guru of the writing community.

The format will be straightforward. The E-book suppliers will desribe their hardware, their publishing terms and conditions, and their view of the future. The discussants will spend a few moments describing their view of the publishing world--both traditional and electronic. Then the panel will discuss the future of books and how the E-books might fit into a world already dominated by high resolution paper.

Issues ranging from the aesthetic (do you really want to curl up in bed and read a novel from a LCD screen) to rights management, copyright, and self-publishing will be considered.

About the panelists

Martin Eberhard is co-founder and chief executive officer of Mountain View based NuvoMedia. He bring more than 15 years of engineering and management experience to NuvoMedia. Prior to co-founding NuvoMedia, Everhard was co-fouonder and Chief Engineer for Network Computing Devices. Eberhard also served as Vice President of Electrons for Belfort Memory International. Eberhard earned his Batchelor of Science in Computer Engineering and his Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois.

Aleksey Novicov is the Director of Development at Menlo Park based Softbook.

Pat Holt was book editor and critic at the SF Chronicle for 16 years (1982-1998). She was named a board member of The Center for the Book at the Library of Congress in 1984. In recent years she has been concerned about the plight of independent bookstores in their struggle for survive wave after wave of chain bookstores, price clubs, discounters, and Internet bookstores. She resigend from the Chonicle in 1988 to create Holt Uncensored, an e-mail book column available free to online subscribers. She is a founder of the Bare Area Book Reviewers Association, the only nonlibrarian recipient of the American Library Association's Grollier Foundation Award, and a former Board Member of the National Book Critics Circle.

Gary Gach's biograpy will be provided.

Contact information:

Martin Eberhard eberhard@nuvomedia.com
Aleksey Novicov aleksey@softbook.com
Pat Holt holtpat@earthlink.net
Gary Gach ggg@well.com

Information for Students:

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