[Prestidigitweeze]

The odd thing to me about forums like this is that every discussion seems to become polemical.

I don't know about you, but I'm here chiefly for information and to discuss ideas. If I'd intended to validate my manhood in a (conceptually) sweaty tough-off, this would be a rather odd parking lot in which to make the attempt.

My learned colleague on one side feels that e-ink is here to stay. My learned colleague on the other disagrees. Why the exasperation? No one has to agree and no one's intellect need be compared to garden vegetables.

The idea that eink is stagnating due to monopolization by the company that makes eink screens is interesting, but doesn't every player from Apple to Samsung to Microsoft aspire to become a monopoly no matter how charitable they try to appear? Why is E Ink Corp. being singled out for having attained that temporary position for a limited market? Would that that were not so, but it's so for a lot of other companies, too. Welcome to Durm & Stranglehold, 2012 A.D.

In a sense, eink was always outmoded by other screen tech, so its enduring niche is created by a lack of versatility in other media. The retina display goes a long way toward increasing the versatility of LCD, as have an improved refresh rate and other factors, but it doesn't erase the need for eink completely -- not yet, at least.

The eink screen seems, in essence, a specialized substitute for physical media. The newest iterations of the screen even look and feel like mutating pieces of laminated paper. It's very possible we'll use a suite of devices for different purposes and that something like eink will persist in some capacity, either as a device with controls, digital paper, or a kind of paper-thin display which we'll attach to other devices as we do rubber skins to smartphones.

There will always be times when the eye wishes to continue reading but is fatigued by bright screens. That physical necessity seems to imply we need eink or whatever will replace it over time.

In one sense, it might well be that e-readers are a transitional device to accommodate the habits of earlier generations. But on the nether hind, many people from every generation would prefer not to gaze at backlit screens 100% of the time, and physical books can create too much clutter in an increasingly synoptic-urban world.

Would it be unacceptable for me to say I think both sides are partly correct?

Deranged Hermit:

Thanks for the useful post.