e-readers in Dockray 2013


rough an interface that has absorbed legal
and business requirements.

It's just half of the story, however, to associate the cloud with mammoth data centers; the other
half is to be found in our hands and laps. Thin computing, including tablets and e-readers, iPads
and Kindles, and mobile phones have co-evolved with data centers, offering powerful, lightweight
computing precisely because so much processing and storage has been externalized.

In this technical configuration of the cloud, the thin computer


d on the other side, the
traditional publishing industry finds its stores, books, and profits dematerialized, the image is
perhaps appropriate. Server racks, in photographs inside data centers, strike an eerie resemblance
to library stacks - - while e-readers are consciously designed to look and feel something like a
book. Yet, when one peers down into the screen of the device, one sees both the book - and the
library.

Like a Facebook account, which must uniquely correspond to a real person, the e-reader


e-readers in Mattern 2014


thics they embody — when the concrete infrastructures look like San Antonio’s
[BiblioTech](http://bexarbibliotech.org/), a “bookless” library featuring
10,000 e-books, downloadable via the 3M Cloud App; 600 circulating “stripped
down” 3M e-readers; 200 “enhanced” tablets for kids; and, for use on-site, 48
computers, plus laptops and iPads. The library, which opened last fall, also
offers computer classes and meeting space, but it’s all locked within a
proprietary platformed world.

[![Be

 

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