In a release that sounds like a bad April fools joke or a tip off for a spy movie, Argentinian publishing house Eterna Cadencia is now selling a book written in disappearing ink. Basically 60 days after you open the sealed package the print in the book will disappear. I have no idea what the publisher was thinking, (although it would make a great gag book to gift to someone who is a slow reader) I wouldn’t want to purchase a book that I couldn’t go back and read over and over again, I have books that are over eighty years old and some books that I bought in college that I still go back and read at times.
If you want a self destructing book, why waste the paper it was printed on? Why not go for a digital copy which would be far cheaper and use a decryption program that stopped working after a particular amount of time. (I remember reading about a concept encryption routine that used the text of a couple of sites as the decryption code and once the pages changed beyond a certain threshold the encrypted data could no longer be decrypted.)
Would you purchase a book that deleted its text after a fixed time?
Source: One of the Tech Blog sites… Can’t remember which one. Will update when I do remember.
News links:
* Publishing: The book that self-destructs in 60 days – News – Books – The Independent and
* LA Times
– Suramya