Flexible AND Touch Sensitive E-Ink Display

[Timoleon]

Please tell me that I've had my head in the sand --- this is a new one on me (courtesy of Slashdot):

http://www.youtube.com/flexibledisplay

"The first touch-screen flexible e-paper has been developed by a team from Arizona State University and E-Ink (the company that makes the technology for Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader). Jann Kaminski and colleagues at ASU's Flexible Display Center say the main challenge is that most touch-screen technologies do not respond well to being flexed. So they used an inductive screen, which relies on a magnetized styluses to induce a field in a sensing layer at the back of the display. The first adopters for the technology are likely to be the US Army. Watch a video of the device being tested."

http://flexdisplay.asu.edu/

I know where this is headed. You will have a wand/stick/cylinder/pencil that you may or may not clip onto your shirt pocket/belt loop. You unroll it, and place it on the hard surface/desk in front of you, and start typing/jotting notes/annotating text. In between lectures/on breaks you might even read a good book/latest newspaper on it. It is powered by the ambient lighting around you, with a built-in trickle charging system. It is wireless and connected to the great electronic miasma, so you can access just about anything. Great for children, students, oldsters or hamsters!!

And this comes just before the single-centimeter glasses-mounted multi-media cube that you will one day be stylishly sporting. Next stop: direct implants with eyeblink/subvocal control.

Oh Brave New World!

...damned mushrooms

[DaleDe]

For keyboards there is no reason to roll it out. Just project it onto any hard surface. http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/8193/

There was even a full computer built out of a few pens. It used a virtual keyboard as above and a projector for the screen. Everything could fit in your shirt pocket, (pocket protector optional).

Dale