I found a story from about a month ago on the Boston Globe about something called the Espresso Book Machine – which is a very bad name for a potentially interesting device.
It’s not a brand new machine, but the company is “planning for dramatic growth in 2009.”
The concept is simple (if expensive): Customer (or attendant) walks to computer console and chooses book from catalog. Presses button. Book appears.
(You can watch the video via the link.)
that machine looks like it was stolen from the set of a 1970’s “technology show”