As a society, we need an open source device for reading. Books are among the most important documents of our culture, yet the most popular and widespread devices we have for reading are closed objects, operating as small moving parts in a set of giant closed platforms whose owners' interests are not always aligned with readers'.

The Open Book aims to be a simple device that anyone can build for themselves. The Open Book should be comprehensible: the reader should be able to look at it and understand, at least in broad strokes, how it works. It should be extensible, so that a reader with different needs can write code and add accessories that make the book work for them. It should be global, supporting readers of books in all the languages of the world. Most of all, it should be open, so that anyone can take this design as a starting point and use it to build a better book.

Check out the promo video as well:
https://youtu.be/vFD9V8Hh7Yg

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[–] psychothumbs@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I need something in between this and a Kindle. I don't want to build my own electronics, I just want to buy them from somewhere without sketchy ulterior motives for how they'll use their control over my device.

[–] papertowels@lemmy.one 12 points 1 year ago

I haven't been keeping tabs on this, but if you appreciate the legacy of pine64 (hardware kill switches on phone, Linux everywhere, etc.) They did release an epaper device:

https://www.pine64.org/2021/08/15/introducing-the-pinenote

I think they're saying it's still developer oriented and not quite user friendly yet though

[–] cyclohexane@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

Unfortunately in our late stage capitalism, that wouldn't be a scalable and successful business model, and they'll unfortunately fail as a business.