The eBook is 40 (1971-2011) Part 5

[Summary]

Previously distinct information-based industries, such as printing, publishing, graphic design, media, sound recording and film making, were converging into one industry, with information as a common product. This trend was named "multimedia convergence", with a ma.s.sive loss of jobs, and a serious enough issue to be tackled by the ILO (International Labor Organization). The first ILO Symposium on Multimedia Convergence was held in January 1997 at the ILO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, with employers, unionists and government representatives from all over the world. Some partic.i.p.ants, mostly employers, demonstrated that the information society was generating or would generate jobs. Other partic.i.p.ants, mostly unionists, demonstrated there was a rise in unemployment worldwide, that should be addressed right away through investment, innovation, vocational training, computer literacy, retraining and fair labor rights, including for teleworkers.

Previously distinct information-based industries, such as printing, publishing, graphic design, media, sound recording and film making, were converging into one industry, with information as a common product.

This trend was named multimedia convergence, with a ma.s.sive loss of jobs, and a serious enough issue to be tackled by the International Labor Organization (ILO).

# A symposium

The first ILO Symposium on Multimedia Convergence was held in January 1997 at the ILO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Employers, unionists and government representatives from all over the world came to discuss the Information Society, the impact of the convergence process on employment and work, and labor relations in the information age. The purpose of these debates was "to stimulate reflection on the policies and approaches most apt to prepare our societies and especially our workforces for the turbulent transition towards an information economy."

As stated in the introduction to the symposium's proceedings: "Today all forms of information -- whether based in text, sound or images -- can be converted into bits and bytes for handling by computer.

Digitalization has made it possible to create, record, manipulate, combine, store, retrieve and transmit information and information-based products in ways which magnetic tape, celluloid and paper did not permit. Digitalization thus allows music, cinema and the written word to be recorded and transformed through similar processes and without distinct material supports. Previously dissimilar industries, such as publishing and sound recording, now both produce CD-ROMs rather than simply books and records."

Multimedia convergence was "creating new configurations among an ever- widening range of industries. The digitalization of information processing and delivery is transforming the way financial systems operate, the way enterprises exchange information internally and externally, and the way individuals work in an increasingly electronic environment."

In the book industry, traditional printing was first disrupted by new photocomposition machines, with lower costs. Text and image processing began to be handed over to desktop publishing and graphic art studios.

Impression costs went on decreasing with photocopiers, color photocopiers and digital printing. Digitization speeded up the editorial process, which used to be sequential, by allowing the copy editor, the image editor and the layout staff to work at the same time on the same book.

In the press industry, journalists and editors could now type in their articles online. These articles went directly from text to layout, without being keyed in anymore by the production staff.

# Some contributions

One of the partic.i.p.ants of the symposium, Peter Leisink, an a.s.sociate professor of labor studies at the Utrecht University, Netherlands, explained: "A survey of the United Kingdom book publishing industry showed that proofreaders and editors have been externalized and now work as home-based teleworkers. The vast majority of them had entered self-employment, not as a first-choice option, but as a result of industry mergers, relocations and redundancies. These people should actually be regarded as casualized workers, rather than as self- employed, since they have little autonomy and tend to depend on only one publishing house for their work."

Another partic.i.p.ant, Michel Muller, secretary-general of the French Federation of Book, Paper and Communication Industry (FILPAC: Federation des Industries du Livre, du Papier et de la Communication), stated that, in France, jobs in this industry fell from 110,000 to 90,000 in ten years, from 1987 to 1996, with expensive social plans to re-train and re-employ the 20,000 people who lost their jobs.

He explained that, "if the technological developments really created new jobs, as had been suggested, then it might have been better to invest the money in reliable studies about what jobs were being created and which ones were being lost, rather than in social plans which often created artificial jobs. These studies should highlight the new skills and qualifications in demand as the technological convergence process broke down the barriers between the printing industry, journalism and other vehicles of information. Another problem caused by convergence was the trend towards ownership concentration. A few big groups controlled not only the bulk of the print media, but a wide range of other media, and thus posed a threat to pluralism in expression.

Various tax advantages enjoyed by the press today should be re-examined and adapted to the new realities facing the press and multimedia enterprises. Managing all the social and societal issues raised by new technologies required widespread agreement and consensus. Collective agreements were vital, since neither individual negotiations nor the market alone could sufficiently settle these matters."

A third partic.i.p.ant, Walter Durling, director of AT&T Global Information Solutions in the United States, had quite theoretical words about the matter: "Technology would not change the core of human relations. More sophisticated means of communicating, new mechanisms for negotiating, and new types of conflicts would all arise, but the relationships between workers and employers themselves would continue to be the same. When film was invented, people had been afraid that it could bring theatre to an end. That has not happened. When television was developed, people had feared that it would do away cinemas, but it had not. One should not be afraid of the future. Fear of the future should not lead us to stifle creativity with regulations. Creativity was needed to generate new employment. The spirit of enterprise had to be reinforced with the new technology in order to create jobs for those who had been displaced. Problems should not be antic.i.p.ated, but tackled when they arose." In short, humanity shouldn't fear technology.

# Job creation vs. lay-off

In fact, employees were not so much afraid of technology as they were afraid of losing their jobs. In 1996, unemployment was already significant in any field, which was not the case when film and television were invented.

What would be the balance between job creation and lay-off in the near future? Unions were struggling worldwide to promote the creation of jobs through investment, innovation, vocational training, computer literacy, retraining for new jobs in digital technology, fair conditions for labor contracts and collective agreements, defense of copyright for the re-use of articles from the print media to the web, protection of workers in the artistic field, and defense of teleworkers as workers having full rights.

Despite unions' efforts, would the situation become as tragic as suggested in a note of the symposium's proceedings? "Some fear a future in which individuals will be forced to struggle for survival in an electronic jungle. And the survival mechanisms which have been developed in recent decades, such as relatively stable employment relations, collective agreements, employee representation, employer- provided job training, and jointly funded social security schemes, may be sorely tested in a world where work crosses borders at the speed of light."

1997 > A PORTAL FOR EUROPEAN NATIONAL LIBRARIES

[Summary]

Gabriel -- an acronym for "Gateway and Bridge to Europe's National Libraries" -- was launched as a common portal giving access to the internet services of partic.i.p.ating libraries. The Gabriel project was conceived during the 1994 CENL (Conference of European National Librarians) meeting in Oslo, Norway, as an common electronic board with updates about ongoing internet projects. Another meeting took place in March 1995 with representatives from the national libraries in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Finland, who launched a pilot project and were joined then by the national libraries in Germany, France and Poland. A first Gabriel website was launched in September 1995. During the 1996 CENL meeting in Lisbon, Portugal, Gabriel became an official CENL website, with a new trilingual (English, French, German) portal launched in January 1997.

Gabriel -- an acronym for "Gateway and Bridge to Europe's National Libraries -- was launched in January 1997 as a common portal giving access to the internet services of the partic.i.p.ating libraries.

As stated on its website: "Gabriel also recalls Gabriel Naude, whose 'Advis pour dresser une bibliotheque' (Paris, 1627) is one of the earliest theoretical works about libraries in any European language and provides a blueprint for the great modern research library. The name Gabriel is common to many European languages and is derived from the Old Testament, where Gabriel appears as one of the archangels or heavenly messengers. He also appears in a similar role in the New Testament and the Qu'ran."

In 1998, Gabriel offered links to the internet services of 38 partic.i.p.ating national libraries (Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, Vatican City). These links led to OPACs (Open Public Access Catalogs), national bibliographies, national union catalogs, indexes for periodicals, web servers and gophers, with a section for common European projects.

How did Gabriel begin? During the 1994 CENL annual meeting in Oslo, Norway, it was suggested that national libraries should set up a common electronic board with updates about their ongoing internet projects.

Representatives from the national libraries in the Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek), United Kingdom (British Library) and Finland (Helsinki University Library) met in March 1995 in The Hague, Netherlands, to launch the pilot Gabriel project. They were joined then by the national libraries in Germany (Deutsche Bibliothek), France (Bibliotheque Nationale de France) and Poland (Biblioteka Narodowa).

Gabriel would describe their services and collections, while seeking to attract other national libraries into the project.

The original Gabriel website was launched in September 1995. It was maintained by the British Library Network Services and mirrored on the servers of the national libraries in the Netherlands and Finland. In November 1995, other national libraries were invited to submit entries describing their services and collections, after they launched their own websites and online catalogs. The number of partic.i.p.ating libraries expanded.

During the 1996 CENL annual meeting in Lisbon, Portugal, it was decided that Gabriel would become an official CENL website in January 1997.

The new trilingual (English, French, German) Gabriel portal was maintained by the national library in the Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek), and mirrored on the servers of four other national libraries, in United Kingdom, Finland, Germany and Slovenia.

What about public libraries? According to "Internet and the Library Sphere", a doc.u.ment available on the website of the European Commission, 1,000 public libraries from 26 European countries had their own websites in December 1998. The websites ranged from one webpage with a postal address and opening hours to a full website with access to the library's OPAC.

The leading countries were Finland (247 libraries), Sweden (132 libraries), United Kingdom (112 libraries), Denmark (107 libraries), Germany (102 libraries), Netherlands (72 libraries), Lithuania (51 libraries), Spain (56 libraries) and Norway (45 libraries). Russia had a common website for 26 public reference libraries. Newcomers were the Czech Republic (29 libraries) and Portugal (3 libraries).

As for Gabriel's fate, the portal merged in summer 2005 with the European Library's website (created by CENL in January 2004) to offer a common portal for the 43 European national libraries. Europeana, the European digital library, was launched three years later, in November 2008, with two million doc.u.ments. Europeana offered 6 million doc.u.ments in March 2010, and 10 million doc.u.ments on a revamped website in September 2010.

1997 > E INK, AN ELECTRONIC INK TECHNOLOGY

[Summary]

In April 1997, researchers at the MIT Media Lab (MIT: Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology) founded the company E Ink to develop an electronic ink technology. Very briefly (and not so well) explained, the technology was the following one: caught between two sheets of flexible plastic, millions of micro-capsules, each of them containing black and white particles, are in suspension in a clear fluid. A positive or negative electric field indicates the desired group of particles on the surface, to view, modify or delete data. The first screen using this technology was available as a prototype in July 2002, and marketed in 2004. Other screens followed for various ebook readers (Librie, Sony Reader, Cybook, Kindle, Nook, etc.), as well as prototypes of flexible displays announcing the forthcoming electronic paper.

In April 1997, researchers at the MIT Media Lab (MIT: Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology) founded the company E Ink to develop an electronic ink technology.

The first screen using this technology was available as a prototype in July 2002, and marketed in 2004. Other screens followed for various ebook readers (Librie, Sony Reader, Cybook, Kindle, Nook, etc.), as well as prototypes of flexible displays announcing the forthcoming electronic paper.

As explained on the company's website: "Electronic ink is a proprietary material that is processed into a film for integration into electronic displays. Although revolutionary in concept, electronic ink is a straightforward fusion of chemistry, physics and electronics to create this new material. The princ.i.p.al components of electronic ink are millions of tiny microcapsules, about the diameter of a human hair. In one incarnation, each microcapsule contains positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles suspended in a clear fluid. When a negative electric field is applied, the white particles move to the top of the microcapsule where they become visible to the user. This makes the surface appear white at that spot. At the same time, an opposite electric field pulls the black particles to the bottom of the microcapsules where they are hidden. By reversing this process, the black particles appear at the top of the capsule, which now makes the surface appear dark at that spot. To form an E Ink electronic display, the ink is printed onto a sheet of plastic film that is laminated to a layer of circuitry. The circuitry forms a pattern of pixels that can then be controlled by a display driver.

These microcapsules are suspended in a liquid 'carrier medium' allowing them to be printed using existing screen printing processes onto virtually any surface, including gla.s.s, plastic, fabric and even paper.

Ultimately electronic ink will permit most any surface to become a display, bringing information out of the confines of traditional devices and into the world around us."

LCD screens of ebook readers were replaced by E Ink screens. Launched in April 2004 by Sony in j.a.pan, the Librie was the first ebook reader with a 6-inch E Ink screen. Launched in October 2006 in the U.S., the Sony Reader had a E Ink screen that gave "an excellent reading experience very close to that of real paper, making it very easy going on the eyes" (Mike Cook, editor of epubBooks.com). The Sony Reader was then available in Canada, United Kingdom, Germany and France, with various models. The Cybook Gen3 launched by Bookeen in July 2007, the Kindle launched by Amazon in November 2007, and the Nook launched by Barnes & n.o.ble in November 2009 also had E Ink screens.

Another display technology was the gyricon, developed since 1997 by PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), the Xerox center in Silicon Valley, California. In December 2000, some researchers at PARC founded the company Gyricon Media to market the SmartPaper, an electronic paper based on the gyricon technology. Very briefly (and not so well) explained, the technology was the following one: in between two sheets of flexible plastic, millions of micro-cells contain two-tone (black and white) beads suspended in a clear liquid. Each bead has an electric charge. An external electrical pulse makes the b.a.l.l.s rotate and change color, to display, modify, or delete data. In 2004, Gyricon Media began marketing commercial advertising, for example small posters running on batteries. The company ended its activities in 2005, with R&D activities going on at Xerox.

Another project has been developed by the company Plastic Logic, this time using both proprietary plastic electronics and the E Ink Technology. As explained on the company's website in 2009: "Technology for plastic electronics on thin and flexible plastic substrates was developed at Cambridge University's renowned Cavendish Laboratory in the 1990s. In 2000, Plastic Logic was spun out of Cavendish Laboratory to develop a broad range of products using the plastic electronics technology."