Slashdot Mirror
Self-Recycling Paper
fermion writes "Xerox is reported to be working on some interesting forms of digital paper. The New York Times reports a 16 hour reusable paper. This system uses a coated paper and special ink to produce a copy that will fade over 16 hours, or sooner if the paper is put back in the copy tray. It can then be reused for a new copy, up to 10 times. According to the article, the rational for this is that paper is no longer used to store information, but merely to temporarily display it. The research suggest that in the typical office many copies end up in the recycle bin by the end of the day. The main obstacle to commercialization seems to be the question of whether people need this product. Will people have digital displays that will take the place of paper? Will something radically different from plain paper, but with competitive costs and characteristics, become popular? Xerox itself is working on something called gyricon, a system of tiny bichromal beads encased between sheets of plastics. Evidently the beads can be set electrically to either reflect of absorb light, thus allowing images to be generated at will. According to the page, the images can be set by a printer or a hand held wand. The 'paper' could even be combined with electronics to create a flexible display. So, /., where is our display technology headed? Coated conventional paper? Plastic reprintable paper? Glasses with heads up displays and wireless data feed?"
Why would I want to print something out that would fade in less than a day? At best this is a super niche use.
"This message will recycle in 5 seconds."
Task Mangler
The reusable paper, I could see being used a lot by businesses - but the problem is one of coexistance with other paper. If you have reusable paper, do you have no real paper? That seems impractical. Or, do you seperate the two and perhaps have reusable paper get mixed up with real paper and tossed? What happens if you forget what you have and take notes that end up on someone else's copy later?
There are indeed many items throughout the day that people need to temporarily display in a dense format, to which paper is ideally suited. But i think electronic paper fed data from the table it sits on or by some other means is probably better suited to this task, since it's truly reusable and probably not something you'd confuse with real paper.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Though TFA is mostly referencing business applications, I can't help but think this would be even more helpful in places like Antarctica and space, where you simply don't have the room or resources to bring in several tons of office supplies.
And the masses cried out, "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0!"
This was posted @ /. almost two month ago./ 07/2243222
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09
Come on... just search for "xerox"...
there is no issue with my network
The real problem with this idea is that I usually don't know how long I'm going to keep what I've written until long after I've written it. Since plain paper is cheap, I'm not going to want to risk using 'temp-paper', in case I forget about it and have to come back to it the next day.
I appreciate the sentiment, but business is about getting business done. The first time work was lost because someone left the memo on their desk for more than xxx hours would be the end of the system. I can imagine some cruel managers getting a kick out of it, but that's about it.
The "paperless office" was a 100x better idea than this (and an idea that's not entirely dead, either. I telecommute, and my office is 99.9% paperless).
My script don't crash! She crashes, you crashed her!
This is an interesting concept but I see it having a major shortcoming:
You are now forced to make a decision before you print on whether the output should be temporary or permanent. Sometimes I will print something thinking it's temporary but I decide I need it longer. Or imagine the potential disaster of writing notes on the printout "in context" and that context disappears after 16 hours. Stuff like "ask Mary about this part" or "copy editing" marks.
I applaud the idea of paper recycling like this but couldn't see myself using it.
I think it has a few other issues too:
1. Needing two printers to print
2. Possibly not being able to distinguish between the two types of paper (assuming they look similar)
3. Having to print twice if you decide that you want a permanent copy
4. Cost(?)
Sunny
Be my Friend
This could make DRM for books feasible. You buy a book, and a week or so later, it fades away.
Its usefulness seems rather limited though...
They will give some tips on using pencil and eraser as a low cost alternative
I think the word intended was rationale.
Seems like there would have to be a whole paper etiquette developed for this to work. Like paper clips only, no staple. No folding. No crumpling. Careful with the corners. If you don't, the paper will jam the printer.
.pdfs of the documents to everyone who attended the meeting. At the end of the meeting everyone can return the paper documents so the paper doesn't get bent out of shape.
It could work, though. For example, your department or team has a meeting. Different folks pass out relevant information. Immediately before or after the meeting they may also send
Then again, if you're going to go to the trouble of sending everyone electronic versions of the documents, why not give everyone tablet pc's and forget about the paper altogether?
and other times simply in the way of other good ideas, even better ideas.
I often use the dual head display so that I can see something temporarily... a place where re-usable paper technology might be useful. Many of the printed reports I've seen in meetings would be well placed on this type of paper technology... as most of the copies end up in the trash anyway.
There are a few places that such technology would be good, check books are not one of them. I think that once technology such as e-books and the like is an accepted thing by society in general, then this type of thing will take off. The Palm Pilot and tablet pc systems were a good idea too... though not too many people want the restrictions that come with them.
When we have a PC that really does work as simply as writing on a piece of real paper, then the technology will take off. Hats off to Xerox though for working to stay relevant and profitable. Any paper replacement technology will have to be more functional though. Imagine taking your e-book or roll-up tablet pc to the news stand and downloading a copy of the day's paper? Or downloading a copy of the presentation while actually sitting in the meeting.
Then again, what good is all that technology if you can simply use a tablet PC? The technology that replaces paper has to be very cost effective since paper is a throw away product. I don't think that 10 uses is really enough to make this worth while.
Besides, if you are using some new, ultra thin tablet pc, you can save the documents to your hard drive on your desktop if needed/desired. People print things to read them later, or read them where having a pc is just not practical. That usually requires that the ink last for more than a day. If you are printing stuff to look at for a few minutes or perhaps hours, its possible that you shouldn't be printing it in the first place, but that sort of thinking is not what will make Xerox more wealthy... they need to sell paper and paper handling equipment. The digital camera has all but killed off the film camera industry. I don't think that its the paper that needs to change, but the way that we handle data that is normally printed.
When Xerox comes up with a tablet pc that works like having a paper notebook and pen, then they will sell tons. Imagine it being like the size of a notepad, functions like pen and paper, and downloads or uploads using bluetooth or other WPAN. That would kill much of the market for this paper technology... maybe, if you could convince people to use it.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Seriously, I like Xerox and I hope they don't shoot themselves in the foot again (like they did with the GUI and the Mouse).
Regards,
MBC1977,
As long as this is not used for the papery 250Gb storage medium!
But seriously, I think this is a great idea, but I think the information should not fade or be erased over time, but rather the paper should be manually erased when needed.
THis would allow people to put paper in the 'to be erased' tray and grab a 'new' sheet when they need paper for temporary use.
I just hope they make some kind of sign or something on those papers to be easily recognizable, since I think nobody would want to sign some contract papers the text of which later will fade away leaving your signature on a blank paper.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Sometimes I prefer to read a very complicated emails off papers. However, the reason I printed them was that I also like to write and mark on them too.
Boy am I sick of vapourware press releases on e-paper, e-ink, whatever else they wanna call it.
They been talking about this for decades now.
Put the product in the stores or shut the hell up already.
How we know is more important than what we know.
This would be perfect for counterfeiters! Print up some fake bills on these sheets, spend them, and if you get caught, the evidence has destroyed itself -- all they have is bill-sized scraps of blank paper!
After Microsoft's emails emerged in their trial, a lot of companies started emphasizing document retention policies. Meaning, of course, document destruction policies. These can probably minimize the embarassing electronic documents, but what about paper?
To take an example nearer the geek's heart, look at IBM producing documents for SCO. I think SCO demanded not only every electronic version of source code, but every printout.
CEOs would probably be very happy to know that all paper in their company is the fading kind, so document retention is purely an electronic issue.
That Xerox page has photos taken with a 10-year-old digital camera! Other photos on the page were taken with a Kodak camera from a generation after that, but still not from this millenium.
My guess is this is just some research project from ages ago that never went anywhere. If they developed it that long ago, wouldn't it have become a product that we'd have heard of by now?
dom
I work on the data in a number of reports and frequently print the works in copy while i tweak the calculations or formatting.
99% of the time they are in the recycle bin within the hour, but sometimes i'll have a particular issue that means i need the printout for a week or more.
The other big plus to paper is that i can annotate things that might be hard on screen. I imagine if i make pencil scribblings on it it'll be useless for recycling.
In the corporate world many things are printed and never read. I had a tech lead years ago that swore he put a photocopied page from a russian engineering textbook in every large report he ever submitted to management - never got asked about it.
- for anything with people in the loop. Who is going to invest the time and effort to return a sheet of paper to a central location as opposed to just scrunching and binning it? About the only applications I can see it being useful for are high-security transactions where you want to make sure any evidence self-destructs after a certain time, or a kind of continuously updating scrolling sheet of paper. In which case, a superflat, nonmoving screen would probably be brighter, clearer and more reliable anyway. Same with noticeboards. "The paper notices auto-update daily!" Yeah, but a screen can update in milliseconds, and the ZBD tech ones only consume power when updating anyway. It'd be nice if it was more like whiteboard technology - draw on a sheet of paper and when have it wirelessly upload to / download from an image database without needing a scanner or printer. E-books with fifty pages, a thousand volumes in memory, and forward/back piezoelectric keys. Art books where you could draw and draw and reload and draw over and split into virtual layers and upload and download and it would still have the texture and depth of paper. With auto-save so that if the cat eats your favorite drawing you can download it wirelessly to another piece of paper without needing expensive printer inks. But auto-fade paper? Just doesn't grab me.
I've always disliked having a light shone in my face all day, which is exactly what a monitor amounts to. It creates the light used for display; on the other hand a sheet of paper just reflects ambient light and is thus much nicer on the eyes (same overall brightness than ambient, same color temperature, etc). I've been following all this epaper stuff for a long time, the sony ebook reader now sold and other advances in the field. What is still missing from most of those is color.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
FWIW, I believe Sony has an "e-ink" based product on the market, it's some sort of uber-expensive ebook reader. I'm fairly certain it's going to be a flop, but it's not a bad demonstration of the technology. I think it's called the Libre in Japan and the Sony Reader in the U.S. (As usual, it's supposed to use some ridiculously draconian DRM if you use it according to Sony's plan.)
Here's a WP article with photo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Reader
It uses some form of e-ink passive display that involves "microcapsules" filled with dye particles. Frankly the whole thing sounds suspiciously like an electronic etch-a-sketch.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Nope. After Enron, the SOX-B puts special responsibility on CTO and CEO for retention. They are criminally liable if they are found to have destroyed the paper/e-paper copies, even if the paper itself is innocent.
At my bank, we store ALL papers in HUGE IronMan boxes and cart them off to offsite storage.
Every cubicle and every office now has notices (in addition to OSHA, money laundering, etc) that warn of dire consequences if we scrub/scrap documents without making sure we don't need them.
I have stopped shredding even 2 years old design papers which contain paper scribblings of long-scrapped or long-finished systems.
They are either in my desk drawers (wonder why the desk is creaking...) or submitted for arhival.
Same goes for email.
We have only soft deletes nowadays on emails and nothing is ever deleted. It is just archived.
This disappearing ink will cause more headaches for people and whet the appetites of lawyers.
I can see a scenario in court:
Defendant: "Honestly your honor, i did NOT know it was that disappearing ink paper. I had written out my idea of reconstructing by buying out xyz bank's share in Acme before we ended up with a different deal."
Lawyer: "Not only did the defendant know this was special paper, she was the one who authorized the purchase of the same 4 years ago, knowing well it looked similar to normal paper, with the delibrate intention of using technology to wipe out criminal actions."
I don't think it will ever succeed beyond a fancy circle...
Xerox thought people would use less paper once emails came into vogue. Our usage of paper has shot up by more than 5 times ever since email and PC's came into being. Now we print out emails, powerpoint slides, reports that are never read, etc.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
First, the target audience (i.e. newspapers) will not use it because this can only be more expensive than ordinary paper. Now, who'd pay willingly double the price for his daily funnies?
Second, and this is in my opinion the bigger threat, we create the information with a best before date. This is truely data that can retroactively be erased and voided. Here's your blackmail information, read it and act accordingly. 'til you take it to the police, the message is gone. Here's incriminating information, Mr. Boss, but don't worry, even if it's leaked, nobody can prove a thing.
I dunno if I should really celebrate.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This goddamn piece of paper self-recycled.
I did my homework.
I swear!
...or is this just yet another solution in search of a problem?
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
I would certainly use this. 90% of the print-outs I make go straight into the recycle bin, so this paper would be perfect for my use. The real question is: with the additional coating, does this paper decrease the environmental stress, or add to it? The equation would be using this paper (up to) ten times versus using ten regular sheets of paper - witch has the higher cost-benefit?
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
I read on the screen unless I want to scribble all over it.
...either way, not much use for this paper.
Then I print it out and make notes, draw arrows, underline, scratch things out, etc. etc. -- it's just faster than doing the same with a mouse.
OR I print things out if I'm taking a flight in an economy seat and don't want to struggle with the laptop in limited space.
On the other hand, when I was still working in a corporate environment, we'd have lots of meetings where there'd be a printout to refer to during the discussion (and everyone would get a copy). Then after the meeting they'd all get tossed. That seems like a valid application of this technology.
Staples
/can/ use paper clips, but my boss doesn't, and I can see a lot of people forgetting.
I took a quick look around the many bits of paper scattered about my desk, most of which I looked at once and then chucked aside, and thought how useful this would be - until I noticed how many had been stapled together. Sure, you
[ cruise / casual-tempest.net / xenogamous.com / transference.org / quantam sufficit ]
'Of course it's erased!'
'But what does that mean?'
'Magic self recycling future paper.'
'Oh. So Marty is still going to get fired in 2015?'
'Yep!'
Slashdot invented the self-recycling news way before Xerox even dreamed of this one
Not to mention confidentiality issues if there's any chance the old images can be ressurected. it certainly couldnt be used in most businesses, legal, govt, or medical practices.
I would expect that "paper" made with e-ink would be much more suitable for the role of "Temporary display of digital information" than specially coated paper - not only is e-paper reusable, but the user can choose when to erase the old "printout".
I kinda doubt that e-paper will ever replace books but for applications such as the one stated in the OP, it seems ideal.
Xerox has now solved a problem that never existed:
-Paper is sufficiently cheap that the purchase of it is all but negligible.
-Paper is made from trees grown for the explicit purpose of making paper, and on the timescale on which things biodegrade is one of the first things to return safely to its original state.
Other than to explore possible secondary applications, such as high-security documents and in the case of the plastic paper the possibility of printing a video on it, this doesn't seem particularly lucrative to me. My guess is that Xerox's goal with this technology is simply to make any first users of this technology pick up part of the bill for its R&D budget.
~Ben
I can imagine the publishing industry using this to only sell you a temporary license to a newspaper, magazine or book. :-(
Paper whose ink was permanent until erased would be much more useful.
A-Bomb
I think the main purpose for this kind of paper is to be more environment friendly, maybe by reducing the number of trees you cut down. But if the process of making this paper uses more toxic chemicals, the situation could be worse. Paper mills are not the cleanest industries.
I hate signatures
once it's affordable, I can't even see this stuff competing - and it'll probably be expensive compare to the actual practicality. Instead of mass copies, people will send and recieve wirelessly to each other's readers. Well, that's how I think it will be in 10 years, maybe 20.
The only problem epaper will have is if the writing utility on it has a god awful implementation - though that will vary by reader.
This seems like exactly the kind of thing where someone will find someway to retrieve faded data. Most likely with the noblest of intentions, like recovering data.
For that reason, I can see no Information Security Department letting this technology though the front door.
Some companies won't even let you reuse paper by printing on the back of used sheets. The one I'm in currently has been systematically removing printers from areas they consider an information risk.
I can't wait until they develop self-recycling toilet paper.
is no more comfortable than the paperless bathroom!
(not original with me, but still true.)
Put enough network jacks (or just WiFi) in the conference room for everyone to connect.
Will people have digital displays that will take the place of paper?
Yeah, they have these things now called "computers"...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Sorry, but to me self-recycling means "walks to the bin by itself".
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
So, /., where is our display technology headed? Coated conventional paper? Plastic reprintable paper? Glasses with heads up displays and wireless data feed?"
In an earlier story on Slashdot, here, the FBI tried to go paperless. I think we should look to them and find out what they needed paper for and see if any of the current alternatives would work for them. Personally I don't see any of these alternatives panning out on a wide scale to replace paper only to supplement it in certain situations.
"To be is to do." --Socrates
"To do is to be." -- Aristotle
"Do-Be-Do-Be-Do..." --Sinatra
teacher: so why don't you have you homework, don't tell me your dog ate it?
student: no madam, it recycled itself
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I think a big step towards the adoption of such a technology would be to keep the paper so that someone would actually want to use a particular sheet again. If the pieces are going to be as easily creased, ripped or crumpled then I doubt people will want to use someone's already man handled sheet of paper.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Two printers will never fly, because businesses need the real ones still and don't want to have to buy a lot of extra... plus how do you know how "used" the reusable paper is?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There was a scene where Sheridan and Delenn where putting a news paper in a recycling station and getting a custom printed paper in return. Sounds like and interesting idea.
The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum. - O'Toole's Corollary
DRM-infected books
This was reported back in September. Xerox Reveals Transient Documents.
Love sees no species.
...back in the seventies. It was a 3M thermal printer. I got rid of it.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
A _very_ similar system was described in Ecotopia, by Ernest Callenbach. This book was published in 1975, and you can tell reading it. The idealism is cloying at times, but there are quite a lot of innovative and imaginative ideas in the novel.
It is a utopian look at a sustainable, healthier society. I just read it recently, and Callenbach describes printing paper that fades in a day or quicker for printing reuse.
/dev/psychic: No medium found
Yes of course you could use a single printer that could print on more than one kind of paper. Many printers have two bins... only now you need a third, because you can't cut out legal paper. Or perhaps a fourth so that you have the recyclable paper in both letter and legal.
But that printer will be more expensive, and there is the matter of loading in the right kind of paper - along with having to store both kinds of paper near the printer.
It's just not a valuable enough difference from normal paper to be worth all this effort and expense, to recollect and reassemble and reload. Companies already spend a lot of time and effort dealing with paper, and this is actually causing more work than it's ever saving in attempting to reduce the amount of paper used! Simply recycling existing printouts is a lot simpler.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
While it may be true that paper is often used to hold information that only needs to be available for a finite period of time, the problem with this technology is that lasting only 16 hours is far too soon for too many things. What will happen is people will waste yet MORE paper making photocopies of the stuff on the temporary paper. This would likely even become the norm even for things that _don't_ need to stick around for longer than 16 hours (as people don't necessarily know right away how long they will need the information for), thus really defeating the entire purpose.
The real solution is to go digital, with lightweight and paper-thin reflective display technology, capable of sustaining a static image without power which can be erased and reused whenever desired... be it 30 minutes later, 30 days, or even 30 years. E-paper. When such technology reaches the ability to display at a respectable resolution (about 300dpi, IMO) in full color, as long as such displays are practical and affordable, I think then we might then _start_ to see a migration towards reducing paper consumption, but not before.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I can just see that some bean counter will decide that an entire company will use this kind of paper... Really, they need to extend the lifespan to be indefinate in order for this to succeed.
No, I will not work for your startup
Staple remover.
The logging industry will never let this fly. What they need to make is paper that regrows itself into trees after it is thrown away.
Train the PHBs and secretaries not to print out every little thing. And if you must print out something for non-archival purposes print it 4-up (2 pages per side, duplex)
And if it's for an archive, try printing to PDF instead.
Were that I say, pancakes?
Etch-A-Sketch!!!
I can see how a thin ,portable, paper quality display would be useful. I don't see how trying to come up with a paper replacement is usefull. Of all the recyclable products, paper is the one that is most easily recycled product. I'd rather see work done to come up with a more easily recycled plastic.