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The Obsessed Inventor of the Paper Computer
One of our favorite Great American Myths is that of the lone inventor toiling in his garage or basement to produce a product that will revolutionize society. More often than not, in both the myth and real life, the inventor dies penniless and unrecognized, his invention either cast on the trash heap of history or adopted in a slightly mutated form by a Big Corporation that doesn't pay him a cent for his years of self-financed labor. But a few inventors - just enough to hold out hope for all the rest - strike it big and provide inspiration for all who follow.
Jim Willard hasn't struck it big. He may yet, but there's no telling. His idea was originally an outgrowth of the defense wind-down after the Soviet Union gave up on the Cold War, when defense contractors like the large systems integration company Jim ran during the glory years of DoD spending started looking for ways to make a living in the civilian world. There was no public Internet back then, but there were plenty of computers that required large amounts of remote data input, and this was the market Jim lit upon.
Imagine a census form made up of several glued-together layers of paper with simple keyboard-patterned membrane switches printed in between the layers, and a tiny, triggerable RF transmitter built into it. People would fill out the multiple-choice forms by pressing printed "keys," hit an "enter button" when they were done, and mail the thing to the Census Bureau, where the forms could be automatically read, via the RF interface, without even opening the envelopes. If - and Jim believes this goal is easily achievable - the cost of the "paper computer" forms can be held below $5 or so, the total cost of printing, mailing, and processing them would be much less than it is for traditional, non-electronic census forms.
Jim also found another lucrative-looking market for his product-in-the-making: polling places. He'd already done a study of a voting machine's life. "It sits in a warehouse for two years," he says, "then some grandmother is going to set it up and run it for one day. It's got to be easy for her to use, and its a true mission-critical application. It turned out cheapest to build a stripped-down PC, send it to the polling location, then throw it away after election day and buy a new one the next time around."
And having only one stripped-down PC per polling place, instead of one at each voting station - with paper computers used as the actual ballots - would lower the cost even further.
During the course of his study, Jim found that absentee ballots were even more expensive to process than those cast in person; in 1991 and 1992, he says, Fairfax County, Virginia, spent about $16 per absentee vote cast, and he figured he could easily get it down to the sub-$5 range using his paper computer technology. But no contract was ever signed and no functional test was ever made. Instead, Jim spent his time and personal resources in a years-long search for venture capital that he continues, still fruitlessly, today.
Fairly or unfairly, Jim blames most of his failure to make something big out of the paper computer concept on the flakiness of the venture capital business. "They won't even look at something unless it's presented by friends," he says, "and even then, if it's not something that immediately jazzes them, uh-uh."
Worse, he claims, venture capitalists live and die by industry fads. "One week they're doing nothing but biochem, the next week they're all doing dot coms," he says. "Paper computing is not a 'sexy' project, just a good market, so they're not interested."
The Thinnest Thin Client Ever
Here's the most recent incarnation of Jim's basic concept: a super-cheap piece of multi-layered paper with a flexible light-emitting polymer screen, a low-end dedicated processor, a stripped-down modem, and membrane switches built into it. You could use this technology to make a Web terminal so cheap that you could send it as a direct mail piece. Plug it into a phone line and it would automatically dial the company that sent it out, call up catalog info, and let you place orders. Computer knowledge (and investment) required by the user would be exactly zero. Jim engagingly paints the mental picture of a poster for Victoria's Secret from which you could directly order the products it displayed, literally making the poster into a point of sale terminal that would both make a sales pitch and "close" the sale, all on the spot, for next to nothing in the way of either cash investment or floor space.
Beef up the concept a little, add a decent general-purpose microprocessor and a bit of RAM, and Voila! - an electronic PDA that costs less than one of the binder-enclosed, paper-based "Executive Organizers" you see in office supply stores.
You'd think Oracle, with all of its talk about networked "thin client" computers, or Sun, where the network is (supposed to be) the computer, would be all over Jim. He says this isn't going to happen; that these companies "...have divisions that have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in current technology. I walk in to see the heads of these companies' thin client divisions and tell them they can close the doors, that everything they're doing is obsolete, they're going to laugh. Why would they want to put themselves out of work?"
In this story published on November 11, 1999, CNET News.com reporter Brooke Crothers quoted Jim extensively, but also mentioned research done by IBM that may lead to ultra-thin computing devices similar to his. Does this mean Jim is dead in the water? That he should give up hope the way so many small software developers have given up on projects once they found Microsoft had something similar in the works?
Jim has invested years in a concept that, if handled right, could change the way computing is done and Internet connections are made, and could change the way remote data gathering is done by governments, retailers, and many others. But Jim is running low on stamina - and is out of money. The comment about his old Nissan pickup needing new brake rotors he can't afford isn't a joke; it's a sad fact. This slow descent into poverty, followed by a life of bitterness and regret, is the fate of most independent inventors. Will it be Jim's? Or will he be one of the few who manages to turn a profit (and receive at least a little acclaim) from his work?
Here, for your review, is Jim's Paper Computer Corporation Web site. Take a look at it. Then let Jim know what you think, either by e-mail or, better yet, by posting a comment here on Slashdot. Jim will be reading what you have to say and taking it to heart. If he has time, he may even jump in and respond directly to your comments.
I am presently involved in working on a project that involves voting machines. The devices themselves are basically huge Palm Pilots - greyscale touch screens encased in an over-grown Etch-a-sketch case (sans knobs). I can tell you that 1, the federal guidelines are quite rigid; his "paper computer" would have to survive all sorts of damage, and is required to have triple-redundant memory, "just in case". There are standards of usability, as well, that are complex. Luckily, we're just writing the interface and ballot creation stuff, not doing the actual hardware, but I have learned a lot about the process. I wish him luck, but he's in for a LONG, HARD fight if he even wants to get it certified, and then getting the localities to adopt it, well, thats another story. They fear change - elections are the ultimate hard deadline, and if you don't pull it off, you can't re-do it, and your name goes down in history.
Side note: our software runs on Windows via IIS but some large, knowledgeable clients have requested a version for Linux. The reasons: stability of NT, which they don't trust for the above reasons. We're a mostly Linux shop so getting away from the IIS crap is our goal.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Paper computers that can be thrown away? I really hope this is some kind of joke. Americans produce massive amounts of waste as it is, this is just more fuel in the fire of our "disposable" culture.
We usually lambaste patents here. But isn't this the situation a patent was designed for? We want to /encourage/ and /enable/ Jim to make cool stuff...which obviously hasn't happened. I don't think it would be fair now, after the fact, for a Big Corporation to take the idea and make megabucks from it. Whether it is a patent's place to stop /this/ I don't know. But Jim should at least have some incentive to think up this stuff. If he is not allowed to patent it, and Big Corporations are allowed to steal it X years after the fact, what incentive does he have to continue inventing?
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Jim should be talking to folks in the greeting card industry. These folks were on the same track ten years ago when musical greeting cards came out, but the technology wasn't there to do much else. With free e-cards on the web muscling in on the card industry, I bet they'd be interested in something new and interesting.
Well, the idea of a super-thin paper client is very cool... But I'm not sure that it's really suited for the purposes that this guy has in mind.
With the advent of the web, and now in recent times, the Free PC (really just a monthly installment - $400 PC with a $400 MSN rebate in trade for $20/mo worth of service), which placing the home computer in reach of everyone everywhere, I don't see any advantage in the voting or advertising arenas, which the article focuses heavily on.
A voting system could easily be implemented on a $400 PC. I'll assume that more than 100 people would vote per station, which is a pretty reasonable assumption... Even if the paper computer was able to hit the sub-$5 range that they want to target, the PC would still be more economical.
As for advertising, a mass-production of CD-ROMs is much less expensive than $5 per for the papercomputer. Their example company (Victoria's Secret) could easily put a nice catalog, even include multimedia if they wanted, and make an easy-to-use interface to order their product on the Internet. Once again, much more economical.
So, anyway, my conclusion is that this is a very neat invention... But I think he's targetting the wrong market.
I'm an electronic guy, professionally and personally. I have always been extremely interested in small electronic devices that do useful things. I have a PICStart Plus on my desk, and the Linux software to drive it.
I think Jim has *part* of a great idea.
Here's the "but."
I am also an environmentalist. I think that small devices should not be disposable.
Imagine how much it would cost to recycle one of these for raw materials or a different application.
Imagine getting a mailing with a reply card using this technology. It is set up specifically for that mailing. To recycle it, for a different mailing would be a real pain, especially if the second mailing requires more buttons, etc.
How about consumer packaging? To recycle that milk carton is all of a sudden not so simple anymore. It's more expensive. If it's too expensive, it'll be thrown out because it'll affect a company's bottom line. It'll just add to the ridiculous amount of garbage that the US has been trying to export to other countries. New York tried to set up a deal to ship garbage here in Newfoundland a few years back. They wanted us to be their landfill... again (the US navy used to have a base here, they left tons of contaminated waste and then refused to clean it up when the base closed).
Unless he can guarantee that this technology is truly reusable/recyclable, and guarantee that users of the technology will reuse/recycle it (ie. easy to do), most companies won't want to touch it.
Why would his invention be good? It's disposeable. What does that mean? More metric tons in the landfil. North Americans already consume, and thus produce much, much more garbage than other societies (including the European ones). What is this fascination with "use once, dispose many" products?
Look at the twinky wrapper. A piece of cardboard, a shell of plastic, and none of it is recycled. You want to vote? Don't use a piece of throw-away paper with no security (reading without opening envelope? Does no one else see the problem?), use a proper system that uses the voter's fingerprint. Walk up to a public terminal, verify your identity with the fingerprint and/or retinal scan (both technologies are existant today), and then enter your vote. Strong encrypted, your vote is sent to an automated computer which will tabulate the votes quickly and cheaply. And no more garbage.
Want more info? Go to adbusters.
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