Science Friction...

A machine that electronically stores 2.5 million books that can then be printed and bound in less than seven minutes is to be launched early next year. It prints in any language and has an upper limit of 550 pages. The 'Espresso' will be launched first in several US libraries. The company behind the project predicts that, within five years, it will be able to reproduce every book ever published.

The new machine as a technological innovation promises to revolutionize how we buy books. It allows printing and binding a single copy of a book at the point of demand without human interactions. Buying a book will eventually be very similar to getting cash from an ATM. You choose a title, insert a credit card to pay for the book -- and walk away with the finished book a few minutes later. On a global scale this would eliminate shipping and warehousing costs for books (thereby also eliminating returns and pulping of unsold books) and allow simultaneous global availability of new books.

This technology and process will produce one each of ten different books at the same speed and cost as it can produce ten copies of the same book. There are two machines currently deployed at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt, and at the World Bank InfoShop in Washington DC.