BiblioRoll, the new digital literary baton

We're not sure that the BiblioRoll exactly meets the definition of kawaii, but it's definitely all sorts of awesome looking, and feels pulled from a 70s sci-fi. The BiblioRoll is a 15cm (about six inches) plastic cylinder that contains three 2-inch LCDs encased in separate sections of the cylinder. Each section can be rotated to display pages of different books, each of which can be linked and referenced together. The good folks from Media Design Okude Laboratory at KEIO University in Japan say that the BiblioRoll won't be complete until 2010, which should give us enough time to save up enough money to actually buy one of these things. Maybe by then we'll also have organized a BiblioRoll throwing contest.

[Thanks, Takashi Matsumoto]

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 1st 2006 6:24PM]

Did I miss something? Wouldn't you go blind reading a book off a 2" screen?

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 1st 2006 6:24PM]

That's cool and all but what about actually turning a page on a real book? Hmm. Do we really need a device like this and what's it's actual purpose?

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 1st 2006 6:46PM]

The designer must have watched Logan's Run one too many times.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 1st 2006 7:04PM]

I wouldn't read a book from a 2" screen. There would be, what, 10 words on a screen resulting in constant scrooling. Someone should clarify how this would be useful.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 2nd 2006 2:24AM]

Thank you for your comments. I am a designer of this BiblioRoll. "2-inch LCDs" is misinformation, but a proper size is 2.5". And it's designed to see a book over two 2.5-inch screens. By using high-precision ones, it's not inconvenient to read like reading mails with mobile-phones.

Please check YouTube to see the actual operation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEdbQhgYdc8

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 2nd 2006 8:32AM]

Wow