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E-Paper Moves Closer
squaretorus sent in this story about electronic paper at the BBC. Seems that everytime any of the e-paper, e-ink, e-whatever companies have a new demo unit they run out and call a press conference. But none of it matters until they have ultra-thin, durable, flexible pages that can be manufactured cheaply...
I know tons of businesses and schools (in particular) use piles upon piles of paper every year. If E-paper ever gets really good, then not only could there be substantial savings for mass-paper users (anyone from the policy debate community knows what I'm talking about), but also it could help slow the rate at which land fills grow, and also slow deforestattion (yeah, there are ton of other causes like population growth, acid rain, blah blah blah)... of course the key would be proliferating this kind of technology to less well to do nations.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
The paperless office is a vision that belongs in the same category as the flying car. Sure, one day it will happen, but it'll take just a little longer than anyone predicted. I suspect we'll be using paper for at least another 50 to 100 years, when electronic paper might be cheaper than the wooden version.
I'll admit that its cool that they're coming up with electronic paper solutions to replace wooden paper, while they'll be a hell of a lot easier to lug around with just one sheet of electronic paper vs 500 sheets of wooden paper in a book, there's still the issue of wether it will have the same rights as the wooden version..
I for one would like to be able to share my books wooden or electronic.. We've seen the problems that come with the electronic version, for example, the E-Book.. Whats to make it so that the companies dont put more restrictive limitations on the eletronic paper version? Once htey get past those issues and it becomes as common and cheap as the wooden version then heck yeah I'll buy it, but until then, and until they get electronic paper to have the same rights as the wooden version, I'm not going to touch it with a 6 foot stick..
There are just two cases when I ever use paper these days, and I'd love to eliminate them:
1 - Somebody gives me old fashioned bills or credit card receipts on paper.
2 - I want to see something at >72dpi.
It's hard to get excited about e-paper... I want to have no-paper, not more-paper, e- or not.
This technology seems like a giant step backwards from where we're headed with lower cost, larger, and higher-res LCD displays.
"You can actually think about there being a book now because you can actually put some electronics on the back of this thing and it becomes a display..."
The speaker is quickly skipping over a very, very difficult problem: Designing cheap, flexible, fast, digital electronics that can address every one of those pixels so that they can be turned off and on.
Just getting the speed and resolution necessary costs $110 for a Matrox G-450 video card, which is not flexible and doesn't include digital output. The final signal to a monitor is analog.
Bush's education improvements were
I'll know that it has arrived when I can watch TV on my wallpaper.
I for one will never replace my 50lb *nix manual with an e-paper one. Or for that matter any of my hundreds (if not more) of real paper books that I have collected. And I'm sure that most, if not all, people will agree with me.
The reason is really simple, imo. The e-paper requires a battery, circuitry, special inks, etc. In the end, it will deccay, break down or I might simply drop it into the bath tub while reading it and zap the hell out of me. I've had many electronic devices fail on me, and in all cases all the information stored on them was lost. Completely. The same is true for e-paper. Sooner or later (most likely really soon) it will break down, no matter how well you take care of it.
The same does not apply to normal, paper books. They last. And last. My oldest book is from the early 1900s, and by no means is it old. There are parchments that are thousands of years old. Granted, it's just as easy to destroy normal paper as it might be e-paper, but given proper care, normal paper has an almost endless life.
So if given the choice, I'd rather get an old-fashioned paper book that I can keep for as long as I want rather that a cool e-paper one that will BSOD in a couple of years.
http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/philosophy/right-to-read .html
This short story illustrates the evils which could be put into play if digital paper is ever realized. The technology itself is a wonderful leap forward, but, I suspect, that the companies controlling the content might get a little greedy.
Although it's doubtful things will get as bad as are described in the story, the technology certainly opens the door for some of it.
Later, GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
"That doesn't meant that you need to have a wire from the CPU to every bit of memory..."
Yes, the CPU uses binary addressing to communicate with the memory module, so few wires are needed. But, inside the memory module, every bit is connected with wires. And those wires don't have to be flexible.
You are right about the fan.
The basic point I think is valid is that a cell that can be made black or white with the application of a voltage is interesting and important, but is only a small part of the complexity necessary. Designing flexible wires to every pixel, and flexible transistors to control every pixel, if needed, is the bulk of the complexity.
Bush's education improvements were
In the article, they talk about making a "book" of this stuff -- what an incredible waste! If the epaper's contents can be changed electronically, there's no reason to have a whole "book" of it -- one sheet should suffice (with some sort of input device to capture "page turn" requests) for most everything.
Furthermore, if you view the epaper as simply a medium through which to display information, you wouldn't need a seperate physical volume for each book - they could all fit into something, say, the size of a PDA (compactflash, etc for removable, expandable storage, and a hookup to the epaper to display -- or even a PDA screen made OF this stuff (thin, light, flexible (foldable?) PDA ^_^ ) - would be insanely useful.
All of this doesn't come with a price, however. If publishing of mainstream works went electronic, there would be no "ownership" of a copy of a work, only a "license". Then, by simply encrypting the contents, by any means, no matter how light, makes it CRIMINAL to build, use and/or distribute a compatible viewer, under the DMCA. So whomever is first to market, wins, and has a larger stranglehold on the publishing industry than M$ has on PC OS's - because noone will *legally* be able to compete in that arena. ("Your honor, our file format, which is used by every major publication, is encrypted, and thus protected under the DMCA. The defendants willfully broke the law when they decrypted the contents of our file format and used it to create their product...")
There are MANY more issues here than just a superthin, flexible, high-contrast display. The article doesn't really touch on the major issues at all, and instead only glosses over the technology involved.