embedded paper :possible?

[John Pearce]

The book you should probably read is called "A Young Lady's Primer"
aka The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson.  It's about a book whose
pages change according to the needs and environment of its reader, in
a way that sounds like your dream.  Stephenson goes into a fair bit of
detail on how this would work, at least in a science-fictional sense. 
I recommend the book highly. 

The way that "A Young Lady's Primer" resembles real books is in its
intent.  In both cases, the intent remains the same, even if content
changes in one.  We might do well by treating intent as being the same
as Subject, in which case the cataloging suestion seems a little more
tractable. 

John Pearce
U.W. Health Sciences Library

> On Wed, 2 Oct 1996, Barbara Stewart wrote:
> 
> > I had a dream last night that I sent a snail-mail card to a friend. I 
> > spent a lot of time embedding a quasi-Java applet of a rollercoaster into 
> > the card, and also embedded a tiny recording of carnival sounds. I awoke 
> > and thought : would this be possible to do at some future date? Would 
> > there be a market for special "cards" or even "books" with a specific 
> > embedded movable graphic or video? I know that musical cards are more 
> > common, and a delight to receive. Why not, say, a remembrance of a happy 
> > event (wedding, birth announcement, etc.) ? I can imagine a lovely 
> > embedded wailing baby on a birth announcement card.
> > 
> > Possible?  And...how would we catalog such a thing? 300 field please?
> > 
> > Barbara Stewart
> > (quite aware that it's not Friday, but unable to alter her dream patterns 
> > to suit the list moderators ;-)    )