Ever since I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey at the age of seven, I’ve been waiting for the day that I could read the latest news with moving visuals on a thin sheet of plastic like the astronauts in the movie. Well, in spite of the murkiness of the developing markets for this sort of thing (Amazon’s Kindle, for example), that day is getting closer all the time. In October of this year, Esquire magazine will release a special 75th anniversary issue that features an electronic cover, utilizing e-Ink technology. Although this is fundamentally just an expensive promotional ploy, it will almost certainly raise awareness in the public’s mind of the products made possible by this sort of technology. Products like the Iliad, which allows you to read and write documents just like paper, except you can transfer pretty much anything on your PC to and from the device, or like Digital Whiteboards, which provide the same functionality on a blackboard-like scale. With innovations like these, the availability of On-Demand Publishing, and concerns about the intrinsic wastefulness of paper, the publishing world is, er, bound to go through some major changes over the next few years .