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New Research Could Lead to Transparent Displays
An anonymous reader tipped us to a ScienceDaily story about advances that may lead to transparent transistors. By combining inorganic and organic materials, we may reach the goal of transparent surfaces that can display information, with no visible wiring marring the effect. The article cites HUDs on car windshields, and targeting goggles for soldiers, but I'm sure we can think of some additional interesting uses for such a technology. From the article: "High-performance, transparent transistors could be combined with existing kinds of light display technologies, such as organic light-emitting diodes, liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and electroluminescent displays, which are already used in televisions, desktop and laptop computers and cell phones ... Prototype displays using the transistors developed at Northwestern could be available in 12 to 18 months, said Marks. He has formed a start-up company, Polyera, to bring this and related technologies to market."
Well, it's Christmas time here so I've got a little time to do some reading. And frankly, I'm excited to hear about the progress on greener technologies forthcoming next year. I was just reading about a projection TV set that will use laser to increase range-of-color and decrease power usage by a third -- win-win! And it got me to thinking; given that the average computer uses about 52,000 pine trees worth of energy every day there's probably a lot of slack that can be tightened up to restrict wasteful consumption. While one could probably save the most by dimming the 'Brightness' setting on his monitor, I strongly suspect the greatest savings will be realized by emphasizing energy saving technologies in the personal computer.
Sure, spending another hundred or so on efficient computing wouldn't make the video games run any faster, but if it was mandated we'd probably notice huge dividends in nationwide energy consumption. Energy that could then be used to run our cars, or air conditioning, or substinence farming. Until then I suppose we could just use the coal from our Christmas stockings to offset the electric bill, lol.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Also, from TFA:
Nice idea, but we don't need high-tech transparent transistors. Existing HUD technology would do the job just fine.
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
"Honey, you look great in that new bikini I bought you. Oh darny darn, the batteries wore out, making it kinda like see-thru."
Table-ized A.I.
I don't see the advantage of having a transparent display. What's next, invisible ink? Cold fire? Inaudible music? Those may have very narrow fields of applications, but com on, for general use, give me functionality!
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
I need to see my display to use it. How is a transparent display going to work?
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
I've always thought this would be great for law enforcement.
Imagine if a driver of a police car could see the speed of other cars - a speedometer hovering over the roofline.
Or, combined with license plate recognition, could see the wanted/stolen status of cars.
I would like the technology to replace my current transparent sheets of glass (I hate windows) and add some nicer details to the outdoors, a parade of naked women , some clowns getting trampled by some dinosaurs and maybe the odd vortex. Outdoors v2.
There is a bunch of concepts for how to use the transparent displays. Most of all I like this: http://www.gizmowatch.com/entry/eye-freezing-futur e-imac-concept/ May be it will become true some time soon....
I want Spock's computer from Star Trek IV. Give me that display, Jonathan Ive, and I'll gladly live in your future.
...but I'm sure we can think of some additional interesting uses for such a technology
For porn!
RW
Here are the first pictures of this technology
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These could make for some seriously fantastic, 24x7 beer googles.
Are you an ugly chick? Let your lover wear these transparent transistor glasses, and pretend that you're Natalie Portman.
As long as you can stand hot grits down your pants, you should be able to get as much nookie as you can stand.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Maybe I'll finally be able to get my Minority Report display (sans Aero interface, hopefully)
i mages/media.jpg
http://homepage.mac.com/caroledanforth/tomcruise/
Nice idea, but we don't need high-tech transparent transistors. Existing HUD technology would do the job just fine.
And I'm sure the transparent display would cost a lot more to fix.
Which means all car windshields should be made of it in about 10 years.
A blog about stuff.
I think it may be the same guy who was trying to start a rumour that the average computer used the equivalent half a container ship of coal to run each day.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
The whole point of a HUD is that you don't have to shift focus between the display and objects in the environment. In aircraft HUDs, the image is collimated, so it appears to be focused wherever the pilot happens to be looking at the time. This can't be achieved by simply putting a transparent monitor on the windscreen in front of your eyes, it requires a projection system. The type of display they are talking about here would not be much better than a regular instrument panel, because you would still need to shift focus from the outside environment to the windscreen. The same goes for a targeting system built into goggles, it would be useless because you would need to shift your focus to the targeting display a few inches from your eye to the target several hundred meters away.
...with existing technologies like used by for example Universal Display, where they use transparent OLEDS?
To repeat what others have said, requires education, to challenge it , requires brains.
there's probably a lot of slack that can be tightened up to restrict wasteful consumption.
You mean cancel the holidays??
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Everyone thinks that transparent displays are a really cool idea until they try to actually look at one in uncontrolled lighting situations. Minority Report displays weren't real, folks, and the special effects crew could ignore physics to make it happen. The key to being able to see things is contrast. If this thing isn't actively both shadowing and emitting, the display will be totally useless in light areas or dark areas or both.
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Stack about 30 or so transparent displays on top of each other and create a true 3-D display - albeit limited in number of layers of depth to the number of screens. Anyone with a 30-head video card for me? :)
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Indeed. And who wants a computer-controlled windshield that can crash all on its own? That would be a true Blue Screen of Death!
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Quit worrying about that crap. 52000 pine trees? The coal puts CO2 in the air enough for 52000 pine trees to be very happy and make more sugar (photosynthesis results in food...). Even if we burned trees for power, when you cut down a tree in America you need to plant 2 more elsewhere; there's a whole tree-planting industry, the foresters and developers just pay someone when they tear out a chunk of woodlands so they go somewhere else and put down more trees; some of the newly planted ones die, overpopulation of an area causes about half of them give or take to get crowded out, and everything is preserved (we have more trees now than we did long ago).
Energy efficiency will come when it's a good business move, no sooner. When the government mandates spending ~$100 more per machine to make it energy-efficient, the manufacturers will use it as an excuse to charge ~$300 more and ramp up sales. When businesses demand cooler, more energy-efficient servers because it costs them $200/hr to AC the server room and $6000/hr to power all the machines, Intel and AMD will offer them $8000 more expensive CPUs that save them $1000/hr.
How about you? Worry about your wallet instead of national energy consumption; move to solar water heating, CFLs, a geothermal heat pump, and tack on some solar panels to kill off your electric and heating bill. Your expenses drop by $500/month and the $20,000 you spend pays for itself in about 2 years. If your neighbors want to eat 5 times the power you do, then who cares? They're not important; when the grid can only supply you with a few kWh/month, you can drop in some storage batteries to power your house at night and go fully independent of them.
I for one am not paying for gas and electric when I buy a house. I'm sealing the leaks; heat-proofing the roof; putting in a custom water heating/heating/power generating solar collector (dense energy collector, my own design, super-efficient); maybe some solar panels if they can outperform my dense energy collector (I can get 35% efficiency for electricity, or sacrifice electricity generation for 90% efficiency heating DIRECTLY from the collector); switching to energy efficient geothermal heat pumps and electrical stove/oven, as well as electrical water heater back-up in case the solar collector can't heat the water. I should overproduce by about 400-900% of what I need (electric; direct, possibly 3 times that if I can make a more efficient system). This is a good business move; I can sell the overproduced power back to the electric company and make money.
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I just wrote a technical report on this idea two months ago. I should have patented that shit.
Can you imagine how aggravating a stuck pixel will be if it's on your HUD or glasses? My friend has an LCD TV with 3 stuck pixels. I understand the conditions which encourage manufacturers not to accept the exchange of a set unless it has 7 or more stuck pixels, but come on; do you know how fleeced my friend feels, knowing that he paid the same amount of money for a display that has 3 glaring defects which affect his viewing pleasure, whereas his other friends paid the same price for a set with no stuck pixels?
TRANSLUCENT
Were that I say, pancakes?
The inside of my dive mask, to show up the data on my dive computer? There is something like it which uses the edges of the mask, but this would be better.
52,000 pine trees worth of energy
What's that in burning libraries of congress?
It's sad when choosing an installation directory on your own qualifies you as an "advanced user."
In Soviet Amerika displays are seen through by YOU.
Flashing white to black for 24hrs might fix it, try it.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Apparently, shutting off lights and using the dryer less would be more effective.
I don't care why you're posting AC
But I want to see my display!
puts ("Python r0cks\n");
52,000 trees must be false - think about what happens when you burn just one log in your fireplace - it gets very hot and burns for a few hours. Now consider leaving your computer on for a few hours - it gets quite hot. Where is there more energy - one computer running for a few hours, or a decent size chunk of wood burning for a few hours.
And if thats just 1 chunk of wood, then how much energy is there in 52,000 trees worth?
I don't have the data here to work it out precisely, since you didn't give much info in your post about your sources, but I'd say you are around a factor of 500,000 out in your calculations!
haven't they already achieve screens like this, as portrayed in the Fashion shows @ SIGGRAPH?
but I think we really need some research into how to create transparent politicians. I think that would be more valuable in the long run.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Hmmm... what if we could stack sheets of these together? Hello 3-dimensional television?
typical.. but necessary?
The easiest app, put a webcam behind the damned screen. I'd rather look at the hottie I'm cybering with all the time.
Next up: transparent pants!
This is really interesting. Presumably one could put a bunch of these in layers and make a 3d display.
Then it'd cost $n^2 times as much!
I'm Jewish you insensitive clod!
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
"52,000 pine trees worth of energy every day".......wtf? I really hope that was a misprint. Maybe you meant all the average computers in the world?
Find a way around having a fan in the power supply would be good though.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
>>Which means all car windshields should be made of it in about 10 years.
Of course it would cost a lot more to fix - and the insurance companies will be orgasmically happy to pass the exorbitant costs unto you; just make sure you never piss anyone off: free glass replacement will be a thing of the past (if all the insurance companies refuse to give you free windshields they'll all be in cahoots with each other to deny you ANY free glass replacement). And replacing a transparent-display windshield (which, naturally, will do-away with all your dashboard instrumentation - so you COULDN'T replace it with a cheaper then-traditional plain one) could be likely to end-up costing you kilobucks (look at what 'opaque' windshield-sized LCD screens cost now - transparent ones will cost more).
("Windshields are made to look through; not at." ~ R.Lasecki)
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
not sure where to reply here but i thought it should be mentioned that hud displays for helmets have to be focussed at a usably distant viewing focal point. ever noticed it takes nearly a second to switch between rear view and forward view? there already exists huds for cars which put the speedometer about 2 metres forward of the driver. i've always wondered why this isn't standard but i bet there is a reason why, something to do with reliability of the device. making a rear view display on the same sort of basis would be quite useful too, it'd cut focus switching in half.
i'm pretty sure there's very practical reasons why this does not yet exist.
i'm also pretty sure there's a limited practical market for transparent displays. an attractive novelty to be relegated to pseudo computer geekiness on movies and sold at novelty toy shops like those plasma lamps are. the main problem is that black text on white is much more readable. text with textures and other text behind it is nearly unreadable. if it's blurred so as to be unreadable it might be useful but even then... perhaps useful for something like a pop-out display for a mobile phone... i'm really having trouble thinking of practical uses for a display which you can see through.
Didn't HAL have transparent circut boards? When Dave was turning him off by pulling a bunch of circut boards, it seems like they were transparent. But maybe that was StarTrek when Wesley was drunk and pulled a bunch of boards and then had to put them back in. I'm just going on memory here, so it might just be my transparent imagination...
given that the average computer uses about 52,000 pine trees worth of energy every day - I will not be satisfied until I have a computer in each appliance at home, including the fridge and the water faucet. I do not like XMas, so hopefully burning 52,000,000 pine trees a day could be used to stop this dreadfull holiday.
Sure, spending another hundred or so on efficient computing wouldn't make the video games run any faster, but if it was mandated we'd probably notice huge dividends in nationwide energy consumption. - I would continue buying the cheaper undeground versions of hardware and leave the more expensive 'mandated' versions for you to burn your money on.
You can't handle the truth.
One average computer uses 52,000 pine trees worth of energy a day? Thats, oh, about 10 billion watts of energy given the average dimemsions of a pine tree. If that's the case, my electric bill should be ALOT higher.
Fast machines, powerfull AI, impulsive invention,... All I lack is a good espresso machine!
this device
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View-Master
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Good LORD how much money are you spending on electricity? My bill runs around $100/month, upwards around $200/month in winter. At that rate it would take at least 8 years to pay for itself.