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Electronic paper moving off the drawing board
rafa writes "Electronic paper is finally moving from concept to manufacturing. Xerox has made a deal with 3M to eventually manufacture it. " They're expecting about a year of figuring out the best process and such, but look for it in on the market early next year. Excellent.
This "electronic paper" is not the same stuff as the "digital ink" and "e-ink" that has been talked about for a few years. This is a non-interactive technology, and has nothing really to do with computers per se.
Its basically rewritable paper. You can "print" an image onto it with a machine like a printer that can change the orientation of the ink "bubbles". The idea behind it is feeding it like normal paper through the "electronic paper printer". Then if you want to erase it or write over it, just send it through the printer again.
Personally I don't see the use for it. Paper is cheap, you can't accidently wipe it out, and its awfully hard for someone to change what's on it. I'd be worried about someone noterizing something printed on the stuff and having someone else able to change it after that point.
I think the electronic ink systems that are being worked on by a couple of companies in the Boston area (and I'm sure others) that use an electronic ink on a bit-addressable paper-like surface to be able to dynamically alter the content of the page like in an electronic book is far more useful, if not at the very least for power consumtion. (ie, once the image on the page is changed to the next page, you don't need any more power to keep it there)
I'm sure the PARC development can be used that way too, but from other things I've read on it, that's not Xerox's intent with it or 3M's.
So what if it's not e-ink? E-ink isn't any better for notarized documents. The key here is that while some use of paper is permanent (records, legal documents, etc..) a LOT of it is transient.
This is true in most business environments today. Most premanent records these days are stored electronically. It's stuff like agendas, faxed plane ticket confirmations, meeting presentations, etc... In my personal case, it's a lot of stuff I printed for use where my laptop is inconvenient (which is pretty often).
I've seen people kill a whole ream of paper printing presentations for a small meeting where everyone just chucks them afterwards. Better to chuck them into a "reuse" bin. It's a way of getting to that "paperless" office without having to kick people from their paper addiction. Even with the reuse, it will probably be years before this stuff is justifiable on a purely financial basis, but it would save a lot of trees. I'm betting e-ink will always be too expensive for this sort of use.
Another possible benefit is security. If I understand how these things are designed, it would be impossible to read them after they're erased, unlike most magnetic media which is really hard to completely wipe clean. Shredding paper is less than ideal... the strip-style shredders will protect against casual evesdropping, but not from someone who's determined (and patient).