First Touch-Screen, Bendable E-Paper Developed
Al writes "The first touch-screen flexible e-paper has been developed by a team from Arizona State University and E-Ink (the company that makes the technology for Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader). Jann Kaminski and colleagues at ASU's Flexible Display Center say the main challenge is that most touch-screen technologies do not respond well to being flexed. So they used an inductive screen, which relies on a magnetized styluses to induce a field in a sensing layer at the back of the display. The first adopters for the technology are likely to be the US Army. Watch a video of the device being tested."
But what purpose does it serve exactly, that isn't served by other devices? It sounds like yet another invention whose daughter is necessity.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I have a better invention for the Army. This device is very cheap, uses off-the-shelf and proven technology, can be folded many-many times into almost any shape you want, has a very user-friendly user interface and changes-tracking system, has excellent backwards and future compatibility, is an excellent storage medium that can last for centuries, has very high resolution, can come in waterproof versions, needs absolutely no electricity and is easy to destroy to avoid capture by the enemy. It is called "Paper". Even better, the patent for this device ran out hundreds of years ago. Snarky comments aside, I'm not saying that this e-paper will not be useful, just that for many situations, there is nothing better than plain old paper.