An Invention of the Year? This Year?

Out of England... A technological revolution! So exciting and new! It's a Time magazine "Invention of the Year," the Espresso Book Machine:

[T]he Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago... the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait.

You only have to wait 5 minutes to read something? Gee wilikers! That's super fast! You think, in the future, we'll ever be able to just read something instantly with the click of a button?

Signaling the end, says Blackwell, to the frustration of being told by a bookseller that a title is out of print, or not in stock, the Espresso offers access to almost half a million books.

I sure do hate going all the way to my local bookseller only to find out they don't have what I want. It's great that they can print a half a million books! Maybe one day we'll have access to a million books or a billion and maybe we won't even have to go to a store! Wouldn't that be the coolest!?

[It's] the equivalent of 23.6 miles of shelf space, or over 50 bookshops rolled into one.

Woah! That's a lot, Dad. That's probably more information than ever held anywhere in one spot. Except in your brain, dad- you're the smartest!

"This could change bookselling fundamentally," said Blackwell chief executive Andrew Hutchings... If you could walk into a local bookshop and have access to one million titles, that's pretty compelling."

You think we'll really be able to buy soooo many books from one place!?

Technology sure is amazing. Maybe one day I'll be able to type thoughts into a form and it will be immediately published and anyone in the whole wide world could see it.