Aaron visited Washington, to watch Lessig pitch his case. And he got to visit Brewster Kahle's magnificent Internet Bookmobile.

[This Internet Bookmobile] didn't contain any physical books. Instead, it connects to the Internet Archive's servers in the Presidio to download them. Then the high-speed printer prints out the pages. The chopper cuts them in half so you can fold them together to make a normal-sized book, and the binding machine heats up the glue-smeared cover to hold it all together. The whole process takes about fifteen minutes for a book...

I wonder what Craig's reaction is to this one?

When I read that passage, I had an image of local establishments springing up to offer local versions of this service. Where patrons would place their orders and wait impatiently for them to be filled, standing in businesses that would be nestled next to (or perhaps inside of) neighborhood bakeries, or delis, or diners. Only, in these places, the waitstaff would be serving still steaming fresh-bound books to the (information) hungry patrons. Books prepared by folks wearing white-aprons, short-order bookbinders, who would ring a little bell when another book comes out of the binder, trimmed, baked and bound to perfection...

"Twain's up!" *ding*

"Dante's up!" *ding*

[hand-blinked from Aaron's blog, after Mark Pilgrim posted the quote on his own blog and on FOS, which was then blogged on Seb's Open Research, where I found it in my Kit news page. Whew.]

10:03:13 PM  [] blah blah blah'd on this