Smart E-books with expiration dates

Coming to campus near you: E-books with expiration dates.

CNET news writes:

When students at Princeton University, the University of Utah and eight other colleges start combing their school bookstore shelves for fall semester textbooks, they'll find a new alternative to the hard-covered tomes they're used to buying.  Alongside the new and used versions of Dante's "Inferno" and "Essentials of Psychology" will be little cards offering 33 percent off if students decide to download a digital version of a text instead of buying a hard copy.  That's not a bad deal for a cash-strapped student facing book bills in the hundreds of dollars." 

But there are trade-offs. 

"The new digital textbook program imposes strict guidelines on how the books can be used, including locking the downloaded books to a single computer and setting a five-month expiration date, after which the book can't be read."

But they also note:

"..... the history of electronic books has shown that readers have found little to love, even when prices are substantially lower. Critics say that most consumers aren't yet willing to read book-length segments of text online and that e-book devices remain too expensive for the mass market."

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Comments Wanted: what other smart features could be incorporated  or intellivated (= intelligence + elevate) into future e-books. Please email me or add your ideas below to the comments section.

Intellignce Level: E-books

Intelligence Level (1)	Adapting:	Modifying Behaviour to Fit the Environment	X
Intelligence Level (2)	Sensing:	Bringing Awareness to Everyday Things	X
Intelligence Level (3)	Inferring:	Drawing Conclusions from Rules and Observations	X
Intelligence Level (4)	Learning:	Using Experience to Improve Performance
Intelligence Level (5)	Anticipating:	Thinking and Reasoning about What to Do Next
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-creating,	Ability to reproduce itself, regenerate
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-organizing	Ability for components to self-organize
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (A)	Ability to replicate components
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (B)	Ability to process information
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (C)	Ability to steadily consume energy from the environment

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Walter Derzko

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