I rediscovered this Boing Boing post that was shared by Mark Kusnicki last year:

Designers Irene Pereyra and Tom Klinkowstein recently exhibited their wall-sized digram called "A Day in the Life of a Networked Designer's Smart Things or A Day in a Designer's Networked Smart Things, 2030." The map not only presents a narrative of how a designer "gets things done with the help of all her smart things" but at a higher level also seems to hint at how we may deal with mass amounts of information in the future.

Here's an interesting paper from PARC. I don't buy the premise -- to create a 3D virtual book -- but the paper raises some useful overlaps with our smart book idea, e.g. references, context, vocabulary.

http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/card04book.html

Abstract: This paper describes the 3Book, a 3D interactive visualization of a codex book as a component for various digital library and sensemaking systems. The book is designed to hold large books and to support sensemaking operations by readers. The book includes methods in which the automatic semantic analysis of the book's content is used to dynamically tailor access. (Update)

One option for 'automating links' in the smartbook might be to use 2D barcodes to link to the virtual version of the book, plus additional resources etc. This post assesses potential for 2D barcodes incl. prelim. SWOT analysis.

The “Smart Tagged” Book that is Smart, Readable and Searchable:
A Third Option for Publishers and a Potential Motorola – Google – Lulu.com – Beal Centre Collaboration

Prepared by Robert K. Logan ()

The “Smart Tagged” Book that is Smart, Readable and Searchable:
A Third Option for Publishers

A Potential Motorola – Google – Lulu.com – Beal Centre Collaboration

Abstract: We are proposing a book that is smart, searchable and readable. We will analyze this opportunity using the New Product Filter developed at the Beal Centre.