Although I noted at the outset that the processed book was not to be confused with physical devices, it is useful to see how the advent of the processed book will help to influence the shape of such devices.
The concept of the processed book complements such ideas about electronic publishing as Alan Kay's Dynabook and Ted Nelson's hypertext and networked information. The Dynabook is essentially a hardware concept: a portable hand-held computer that could serve as a viewing device for the world's knowledge. It differs in an obvious way from the processed book in that the processed book is about content in digital form, not hardware, whose creation is shaped by the presence of ubiquitous computing. Of course, many of the ideas of the Dynabook have now found their way into the marketplace in the form of personal digital assistants and some aspects of wireless phones. These devices, among many others, play a role in the development of the processed book: For viewing, editing, linking, and communicating or transmitting.
Ted Nelson's vision of non-linear writing closely resembles the concept of the book-as-network-node, though Nelson ultimately became devoted to building a system to enable his vision and focused less on the creation of content. The distinguishing aspects of the processed book are that (a) it is about content; (b) it outlines how the creation of content changes in a digital environment; (c) it implies a certain business dimension (who will build these tools and why); and, (d) it points to the increasing alienation of an author from his or her work as the act of processing serves to separate the wellsprings of creativity from all the acts of summarizing, indexing, and abstracting that automation is heir to. Ultimately Kay and Nelson are humanists, but the processed book is a post-modern development.
Among the many competing visions for electronic publishing today, one (mostly favored by established media companies) wants electronic publishing to look very much like hardcopy publishing, but without the expense of managing physical inventory. To which I say: Nice work if you can get it. This vision usually concerns itself with such things as copyright protection and is inclined to support electronic publishing initiatives where properties are kept distinct. One outcome of this vision is a generation of ebooks—in this case, hardware devices—that are dedicated book readers. The word "dedicated" is important: An ebook that is only an ebook is fundamentally different from a digital cell phone or personal computer, which have multiple applications. A dedicated ebook is a separate device. Most importantly, it is not designed as a computer peripheral because to do so would mean that the content would be copied in the process of moving from the computer to the peripheral, and if it can be copied in that way, it can be copied in many others.
This version is bound to fail, not because copyright is dead but because all such books published in this manner will have to compete with books that draw on the resources of the processed book. A book that stands by itself literally stands by itself. It competes with an army of networked information. This is not to say that some individual books are not better in some important way than a book that is a network node, but to make the obvious marketing point: The real challenge for creative people is to get others to pay attention to their work. This is why publishers exist and why they will continue to exist. Without the support of a network, most books will get lost amidst the huge outpouring of new material.
So we shouldn't expect to see dedicated ebook readers. Instead, we will have reading devices that connect to other computing devices: The wireless phone with a bigger and better display, for example. In the technology world, these are called convergence devices. In time we should expect that we will all carry one—and only one, serving multiple uses.
This means tradeoffs. While a dedicated ebook reader would naturally be optimized for the reading experience, convergence devices will please no one entirely. The importance of this is that it will slow down the acceptance of digital readers as hardcopy simply continues to do a better job for some functions. Over time, even as we see the hardcopy world shrink, certain areas will remain mostly in ink and paper, literature in particular. The processed book will invade professional information first, college texts second, and then begin to nibble at the edges of consumer or trade publishing. The inroads of the processed book will be gradual enough that many people will not notice it happening, even as they now happily and innocently purchase DVDs of movies that include all sorts of "non-primal" elements such as previously deleted scenes and interviews with directors and actors. The processed book will inevitably takes its place on the virtual bookshelf, where it will be read in front of the fireplace, while the genetically engineered dog snoozes on its pillow.