The Long Pen

[Locutus]

John Scalzi gave a book signing from 3000 miles away - from the books.

A few weeks ago my publicist at Tor Books called me up and asked me if I would be interested in flying to New York to sign some books in Anaheim. I remember thinking that would be an interesting trick, and then she explained herself. There was this new computerized remote signing hardware called Long Pen, in which authors signed their signatures in one place, and a remote controlled pen replicated the signatures in another. In this case, where I was signing and where the books would be signed would be separated by 3,000 miles. This all seemed fairly science fictiony to me, so I said sure, I’d give it a try.

I have to say, I love this idea. While I do enjoy meeting the authors I like to read, I see other uses for this.

For instance, what if the author is in space? Like an astronaut who wrote a book, and the schedule a book signing while they are in space. How cool would that be?

Or, the President is on a tour junket, or in his bunker, or on vacation, and a piece of legislation comes up that needs to be reviewed and signed immediately. (No, I don't know what, I'm just supposing.)

Or, closer to home, you have some sort of official documents to sign, and a notary has to be there, but you are across town/stuck in traffic/a different country. You sign and everything moves on as if you were there in person.

Obviously, there would have to be safeguards in place to ensure that the signature is indeed yours, and I don't know how they could do that, but once that hurdle is surmounted, what useful technology this is.

I love that scifi geeks rule the world.

[jedijeff]

I like the Idea of being able to sign Documents, as it could save a lot of time with mailing etc. I know when I was woking on my wifes immigration papers, technology like this would come in real handly, as a lot of the time was spent sending things for people to sign, etc.

I am not much for autographs, but the big part of the auotgraph is getting to meet the person. I think if they signed remotely, the reason of getting autographs for me would be gone.