Friday, March 18, 2005
E-Reading Forms - Back to Scrolls
This NYT article discusses Big Screens in Small Packages , providing an update to my earlier post about E-Reading and New Forms. One emerging form is based on E-Ink technology like this effort by Phillips Electronics to produce a scrollabe large screen that rolls back for storage in a cell phone or PDA when not in use.
"THE shrinking bulk of cellphones and digital organizers makes them easy to carry, but the miniaturization comes at a cost: the screens are shrinking along with the electronics. You can read a short text message on them, for instance, but not a page of a newspaper.
Within a year or two, however, you may be able to pull out a thin plastic screen from the side of your phone or digital organizer, read a magazine, a map, or a memo, then let the screen roll back into the device.Researchers at Philips Polymer Vision, a part of Philips Electronics, have produced a working prototype of such a screen, which can be pulled out like a modern papyrus to display many lines of highly legible text. The lightweight screen is so flexible that it curls around a pencil."
They expect to have the screen in a fully functioning working device this May as a base for market development. I wonder if this will take off. If so, the history of our reading forms will show evolution from papyrus scrolls to printed-paper books to scrolling on fixed LCD's to E-Inked polymer scrolls. Maybe old forms never really die, they just share space with newer forms or await revival by newer functionality.
"THE shrinking bulk of cellphones and digital organizers makes them easy to carry, but the miniaturization comes at a cost: the screens are shrinking along with the electronics. You can read a short text message on them, for instance, but not a page of a newspaper.
Within a year or two, however, you may be able to pull out a thin plastic screen from the side of your phone or digital organizer, read a magazine, a map, or a memo, then let the screen roll back into the device.Researchers at Philips Polymer Vision, a part of Philips Electronics, have produced a working prototype of such a screen, which can be pulled out like a modern papyrus to display many lines of highly legible text. The lightweight screen is so flexible that it curls around a pencil."
They expect to have the screen in a fully functioning working device this May as a base for market development. I wonder if this will take off. If so, the history of our reading forms will show evolution from papyrus scrolls to printed-paper books to scrolling on fixed LCD's to E-Inked polymer scrolls. Maybe old forms never really die, they just share space with newer forms or await revival by newer functionality.
