Paper-thin Monitors

So today I thought I'd share some "new" technology. A few years ago I heard that they developed the technology to actually build paper-thin monitors that you could bend and fold and crinkle up, and they would still work fine. There are actually several companies that have "done" this, and also several terms for this.

The technology has actually been around for several years. It just hasn't been practically used yet, even though they keep saying production costs are finally low enough. From what I've read, one of the first companies was E-Ink Corp (possibly a division of Lucent?). See the Article on USA Today. Although, BusinessWeek featured an article about rigid, paper-thin screens before that, from both E-Ink and a company called Gyricon Media (possibly a division of Xerox?). The article possibly started one of the best known terms for this technology, ePaper. From there things just got better (maybe not as fast as you'd expect).

HP unveiled a flexible version that was built to retain an image even after power had been turned off, read more here. Other advances allowed video and live updates. Even Sony recently introduced their version of it see more here. You can also read about Electronic Paper on Wikipedia for more history and how it works.

So why haven't we seen this in stores and on newstands? And why are there still people that haven't heard of this? There are several theories to this that I have heard. One is that the newspaper companies purchased the rights to this technology so they wouldn't go out of business. Another I've heard is the obvious one, "it's just not practical yet". I surprised at how that can be an excuse. You'd think that if their technology is that good, then it wouldn't matter how "practical" it was, they just have to be smart enough to market it so people will pay for it (no matter how much it costs). Once they do that, then they can start to reduce their production costs.

Either way, I think it is a cool technology, even if it's been in production and promised to be out within the next couple years for, at least 8 years now.