Future Paper

If you are worried about using too much paper, well fear not because we might soon be using flexible sheets of digital ink instead. At the Consumer Electronics Show, U.K.-based Plastic Logic demonstrated an E-Ink “tablet” dubbed the PaperTab, which was little more than a thick, floppy sheet of plastic, connected to a high-end Core processor from Intel. Each of these sheets can accept touch input, and can share data when in contact with one another. There are some pretty cool things that you can do with this paper if it can be connected to a processor. Throw in VoIP services and you will be able to get pictures and videos on the thin piece of plastic. As far as prototypes go, these were in a very early stage. The processors and power supplies for the sheets were actually stashed under a table and connected by wire. To communicate, the sheets used a centralized computer, which mapped each of their physical coordinates over Wi-Fi. It’ll take a lot of work to embed all the necessary components into the actual sheets.