The paper-less society is near!
Picture by Sarah G…
The next generation of eReaders have a great potential for saving paper and the next step some years later is digital paper or ePaper that eventually will replace eReaders. One thing that is so interesting with ePaper is that it’s flexible and bendable. The dream for mobile devices! Fold it up if you need a larger screen and fold together when you’re finished. Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are currently the most promising technology for super-thin displays and flexible displays. The downside is that OLEDs are expensive to produce and they also have trouble with burn time for blue colors.
Currently there are numerous good news around OLED, here is a small collection, all from MIT:
- Cheaper and more robust OLEDs
A new cheaper process that aims to solve the problems of high fabrication costs and instability for OLEDs.
A Cheap Route to Robust LEDs
. - OLEDs printed with ink-jets
Now the chemical giant DuPont is reporting the development of long-lasting organic-display materials that can be printed cheaply over large areas, much like ink.
Cheaper Big-Screen OLEDs
. - Mass-production of affordable and flexible OLED displays
The electronics behind a new flexible OLED display are made on tools used to manufacture LCD backplanes. The development brings bendable color video displays closer to being commercial products.
A Full-Color Screen That Bends
. - A display that doubles as a camera
For decades, engineers have envisioned wearable displays for pilots, surgeons, and mechanics. But so far, a compact wearable display that’s easy to interact with has proved elusive.
The Display That Watches You
The paperless office and even society is near. Not completely paperless but almost…
Previuos post about displays
Four computer interfaces that will change your life
Will e-Readers save the world?
Reading on Kindle is so seamless that since buying it I have not held a physical book in my hands. It is a wonderful reading experience. The two things I like the most: (1) very easy on the eyes because text on the flat screen is crisp and the text size adjustable, and (2) almost instantaneous look-up of any word via the built-in dictionary. If the dictionary feature was not available, I probably wouldn’t have bought this device. The other features like taking notes and the text-to-speech robo-voice are nice but really not that important.
I wouldn’t be surprised if in five years most books are read on Kindle or similar e-book devices. The Kindle reading experience is much superior.