A Page Turner

When I first heard about the e-book reader prototype developed by the University of Maryland at College Park and the University of California at Berkeley, descriptions of how it could "simulate turning the pages of a book" or "mimic turning book pages" in The Chronicle of Higher Education made me concerned that this would be little more than a variant of the ridiculous Turning the Pages software in use at many museums and libraries. What turns out to be more promising about this project, however, is the fact that they seem to have actually thought about interface design. (For a humorous take on the assumed user-friendliness of print culture, see this YouTube video "Introducing the Book.")