New Year, New Concepts
Every year around this time there is “new” buzz from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas about the most recent toys to enter the consumer markets. The CES also showcases a number of Concept Cars – ideas that aren’t actually coming to market as products this year but are getting closer to the masses.
Two of those concepts that I have been intrigued by for the past couple years are memjet printing (blazingly fast digital imaging that leaves traditional toner based printing in the dust) and digital papers (think Harry Potter’s newspaper). It is probably a good thing for my old brain that these things are years in development because it takes me about that long to understand what the ramifications of these new technologies mean for the imaging industry.
We’ll leave memjet alone for now – it has actually hit the ground in North America and is being engineered to compete with the currently available competitors and will no doubt be adopted by established manufacturers. Maybe food for thought later . . .
But the digital paper offerings are getting more interesting by the month. The video from Paper Tab, released in conjunction with CES, shows how the user can interface with the paper thin “tablet” by flexing the sheet rather than tapping or swiping – very intuitive! This particular demonstration involves research by Intel, Plastic Logic, and Queens University. I confess that I can’t really imagine many real world application — especially for the “multi-sheet” applications in the demonstration — but I know that there will be. And it seems to me more user friendly as an eReader than as a method for inputting information — but if the user could use a speech to text tool maybe that would be an option.
More things to come every year, but this is just another example of other ways to convey information in print without paper. Wonder what the grandkids will think when we tug out our printed book treasures?
