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With sustainable forests diminishing, especially in the Amazon regions, books made from materials derived from them are going the way of the Dodo in due time. It might not occur within our time yet, and probably also not within that of our grandchildren or further removed. Inevitably it will come to pass.

Recently in the CES expo in Los Angeles, Sony unveiled its successor to its 2004 ebook reader, the Librie, simply called this time the Sony Reader. The Reader is the size of a paperback and weighs less than 9 ounces. Its 6-inch display purportedly looks very close to paper.

The technology used for making the Sony Reader is a vast improvement over that used in machines like PDAs and tablet PCs, which generally use LCD displays. The trouble with LCD is the display has to be lit, usually by backlighting, and the screen flickers. Though the eyes cannot see this flicker so obviously, the eyes do register it by becoming tired after prolonged reading.

The display on the Sony Reader is not backlit, and there is no flicker of any kind. e ink, the technology used to achieve this, is an electronic ink which can arrange tiny black and white capsules or microcapsules to form letters or characters.

Sony has already made deals with publishers like Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins to sell their digital e-books on Sony’s Connect online store. The expected retail price for the Sony Reader is between USD300 to 400.