Slashdot Mirror
Electronic Paper
Omega Prime writes: "The BBC has an article about the latest advances in E-Paper. That is, flexible display media that is both cheap and reuseable. The possibilities for this are endless, Can you say Holodeck wallpaper?" There's also an AP article. Do you ever get the feeling that electronic paper is going to be just around the corner for a long, long time?
I was just thinking about this today, check out eink, they say they have a product for release in 1st Quater '02.
This makes video possible. This is in contrast to other efforts, which have concentrated at static images with relatively slow refresh.
Also, the display is capable of displaying 256 shades of gray. This would make anti-aliased text possible.
Imagine having a roll-up video screen in your pda/laptop. You could have a pen-sized cylinder that is your pda and simply pull the screen out when you needed it.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Digital Rights Management isn't such a horrible thing, provided they respect the right of first sale throughout the process (meaning, I can buy something and they can't restrict my right to sell it to someone else). However, the cynic in me says this is just one of many ways to eliminate that right.
:-)
Personally, I'd love to have a single piece of e-paper for much of my periodical reading. I get many trade rags every week and I throw them away when I'm done with them. A single piece of paper that handles all my trade rags, hm, my wife might like that.
-- PhoneBoy
The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of anyone, including the poster.
You can have windowless cars that are completely safe because the inside can be plastered with Closed Circuit pictures of what's outside. Heck, imagine walking to your door and being able to look at whose standing there, without them being able to look in, because your door has a sheet of this paper on it.
Of course, take it a step further. You can folder this paper, imagine now that you mold it to someone's face, where it as a mask, and used a computer controlled face to impersonate someone.
There some picture from the developers here
I really hate Dan Patrick.
this is the kind of advance that shows how far the Kingdoms of the Sun and the Soft are out of it...
The NextGen of Tech may well go to the device manufacturers and the consumer megalopolies who actually try to deliver what customers want...
Imagine the Gibsonian uses for this stuff...
1. Advertisings displays out of BRunner and Neuromancer, entire urban Downtowns morphed into 24/7 streaming video walls
2. Guess, Gap, Gucci, Hillfiger, Lauren, et al incorporating streaming logo displays in clothing
3. Functional PDA's that are wearable and shapeable to specialized applications
4. Rooms that can be turned in SensorySurround MM experiences with 5.1 or DTS or DolbyPro, throw in a DVD or IMAX experience, talk about "Immersive"!!
5. Genuine combat gear (ala "Predator") that can mimic the surrounding environment..the ultimate "Ghillie Suit" for snipers and SpecOps
6. Completely accurate training environments for many, many "environmentally difficult" training situations from fire/rescue, law enforcement, combat, flight, driving, to Wall Street Trading Floor Simulations...WHOO DOGGIE!
7.??????????????
Gibson, Shirley, Bova, Vinge, Cadigan...Your World and Welcome to it!
......
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
Well I think the obvious next machination would be a wireless net connection embedded in each one. Then you can take Slashdot on the bus, read the NY Times, all your email, and take care of all your business. Even run a whole OS, eventually. Then you could really take your work home with you.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
Am I the only one that jumped a little when they said the screen was so small?
How are they planning to sell this in bundles? And another question is, they say "inexpensive," but how "inexpensive" is it?
I wonder how close they are to having the same e-paper work as a scratch pad that can be written on...?
> Who wants a floppy display?
Anyone who doesn't have permanent room for a rigid one the size they want. Most home cinema projection screens roll up. Now you don't need the projecter.
On a smaller scale, you can fit a large laptop sized screen in your pocket with your Palm sized device.
rant
Imagine the Gibsonian uses for this stuff...
1. Advertisings displays out of BRunner and Neuromancer, entire urban Downtowns morphed into 24/7 streaming video walls
This will definitly come to be - specially if producing large surfaces of e-paper is cheap enough. Then again, having moving images all around you might be a bit of a sensory overload
2. Guess, Gap, Gucci, Hillfiger, Lauren, et al incorporating streaming logo displays in clothing
Transparent clothing with smoothly moving semi-transparent areas
3. Functional PDA's that are wearable and shapeable to specialized applications
The problem here is how to input data and give commands to the PDA. An actual flexible screen is probably a no-no for most applications (imagine reading your newspaper with no hands - not very practical)
4. Rooms that can be turned in SensorySurround MM experiences with 5.1 or DTS or DolbyPro, throw in a DVD or IMAX experience, talk about "Immersive"!!
If the wide e-paper surfaces are made cheaply maybe. The problem here is either big pixels (small number of pixels - big surface) or lack of storage and bandwidth (lots of pixels, lots of data - to keep the same pixel-size, the number of pixels increases roughly with the square of the diagonal, and so does the ammount of data)
5. Genuine combat gear (ala "Predator") that can mimic the surrounding environment..the ultimate "Ghillie Suit" for snipers and SpecOps
If you can get good enough sensors to feed the screens plus color screens, then yes, this is a very realistic possibility.
6. Completely accurate training environments for many, many "environmentally difficult" training situations from fire/rescue, law enforcement, combat, flight, driving, to Wall Street Trading Floor Simulations...WHOO DOGGIE!
Preparing for high-stress situations wich happen in non-controled environments (an airplane cockpit is a controled environment) requires not only quality imaging but also other inputs such as sound, smell, temperature - imagine training fireman - some of the most inportant inputs for an experienced fireman come from the senses of smell (smoke), sound (a wooden beam starting to break) and touch (feeling burning hot air coming from a certain direction).
Maybe because it becomes unbreakable?
Maybe because it's easier to put away?
Maybe because you can now attach it to non-flat surfaces?
Think!
Dream!
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I hear talk of paperless offices and paperless this and paperless that. Why are we so opposed to paper? As someone who spends 50-60 hours a week on a computer, I need my paper. It's the last bastion of sanity I have left.
I don't want to be permanently attached to cell phones and hand-helds. I keep my to-do list on a little scrap of paper, that neatly fits into my pocket. At the end of the day, it's dutifully thrown into the trash bin. It works just as well as any $160 dollar device, and it never breaks down or crashes. Heck, it's not even bulky like those personal organizers.
One day he came in and said 'I've just been told that the publishers have increased the price to £40. I think that's out of the price range for most student, and can't ask you to pay that'
His solution? Telling everybody to fuck the publishers and photocopy the entire book! Those publishers must've been mightily pissed off.
If e-paper ever becomes standard, only people with computers or access to a computer will be able to write books and letters. If books are distributed digitally, then printed on e-paper, poor people may not be able to afford to read.
The document about the right to read really applies here whether you agree with it or not.
E-paper should go the way of E-toilet paper....
flush it down the toilet.
There's a second lobby that fought against marijuana too -- the printing industry (how ironic). Someone came up with an economical method to produce hemp paper. However, this would mean printers having to retool their presses. William Randolph Hearst (the billionaire media mogul and Patty Hearst's daddy) lobbied Congress to make marijuana illegal because he didn't want to spend a dime in retooling presses that, to him, were perfectly good at what they did.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
What happens when documents can be changed at will, including copies already 'printed'? Orwell said: "He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past." If all documents a published on this stuff, a level of control becomes possible that was previously unthought of. Give me documents that are immutable, please.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
I had also read from a book called "The emperor wears no clothes" that said that the head person at Dupont had a lot to do with making marijuana illegal (he was a bit more scared of the oils that could be made from hemp, much much cheaper then using the normal oils they use in plastics).
Is something like an 8.5x11 sheet of this stuff on a sturdy clip board - with some memory. This way I can take class notes and such, and have it simply record my pen strokes. Dont bother trying to interpret what I write. Then when I fill a page - hit a store button that saves what I did and clears off the page for me.
I guess I want to see something like those "note pads" on star trek TNG....