Truck and Barter: Fighting Poverty with the Espresso Book Machine

The World Bank has started the first Print On Demand (POD) device - the Espresso Book Machine (EBM);

"The new low cost and fully automatic book machine, developed by On Demand Books LLC (ODB) with initial funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, will revolutionize book sales by printing and binding a single copy of a book at the point of demand. EBM can produce 15 - 20 library quality paperback books per hour, in any language, in quantities of one, without any human intervention. On a global scale, this would eliminate the costs of shipping and warehousing, returning and pulping unsold books, while allowing simultaneous global availability of new books. Print jobs can be initiated from the machine itself or from any locally connected computer using nothing more than a web browser.

Young ambassadors from DC high schools and universities will be present to officially print the first book by a retail customer at the World Bank InfoShop, the first site to offer this service. Buying a book will eventually be like getting cash from an ATM. You choose a title, insert a credit card to pay for the book and walk away with the finished book a few minutes later."

Is this a good way to fight poverty? I don’t know. If you were to ask Easterly he would have plenty of things to say. My challenge is for development institutions to be able to provide every student in the developing world the material he/she needs to develop their minds to the fullest like the following student from Mozambique.

Hi! my name is Guido Da Silva, and I am a student of economic course at Eduardo Mondlane University - Mozambique.
would you send me a book of Microeconomic, I need it very much.
My post address is
Guido Da Silva
Av. Josina Machel,200
3º Andar Flat 10
Maputo
Mozambique

(I found it in the comments section of a post at New Economist blog)

Comments

Ignacio wrote:

Maybe this type of machines, if available in developing countries, would allow exactly that. If the university in your example, in Mozambique, had such a machine, then maybe it would be easier (and cheaper) to have a book on Microeconomics printed on demand for that student, instead of having to ship it.

Regards,

-- April 11, 2006 2:48 PM ∞

Per Kurowski wrote:

This machine is best for that odd or old special book that it would be to expensive to have in the inventory. As you would have to ship the machine, the paper, the inks and what have you plus arrange for the university in Mozambique to duly pay the royalties to the author I seriously doubt it would work for our friend of Mozambique. But you know the saddest part of it all? That is that in his desperate plea for a book in microeconomics, he might actually get a really bad one. A book that got printed just because the author was the friend of someone, or in cahoots with someone.

-- May 19, 2006 6:19 AM ∞

Chris Lubega wrote:

How much is this machine? How heavy is it?

Thank you,

-- June 6, 2006 8:57 AM ∞

Truck and Barter

Fighting Poverty with the Espresso Book Machine

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