To select the book you wish to read, you dial the book’s number. The first page appears on your screen. You can turn the pages backward or forward by using buttons on the vision phone.

If you are halfway through a book and you have to leave, there is no reason why you can’t finish it when you get home. You can dial the library and the book number from home and go on with your reading.

While you are in the library, you might look at some travel film, to help you decide where to go for your summer vacation.

How about Australia? It seems a long way away, but it doesn’t take so long by airplane. You will find sandy beaches, blue skies, and endless sunshine along the Great Barrier Reef.

There are glass-bottomed boats through which you could watch the tropical fish.

Note: I love the digression here. Here we are, talking in detail about how electronic bookmarks would work (and do work—anyone who has read a Kindle book on the e-reader then their iPhone, and then their PC knows that Hoyle gives a good description of how it works), and suddenly half the page is devoted to how beautiful Australia is.

Up next: How could a writer in England say that it “doesn’t take so long” to get to Australia? The plane! The plane!