Is the Sony Reader a glimpse of the future?

[Alexander Turcic]

BBC commentator Bill Thompson asks what tomorrow's mobile devices will look like, and utilizing exceptional far-sight, he sees a place for the Sony Reader and other similar devices with new screen technologies.

LG Philips and Universal Display Corporation have their own full-colour flexible screen, with a 320 by 240 pixel display, while Cambridge Display Technology continues to develop its own flexible screens based around polymer LEDs.

We're also seeing devices with new displays built in to them, like the Sony Reader, or the new Readius from Polymer Vision which has a screen that wraps around and unfolds to let you read from its greyscale display.

Researchers in the US have managed to solve one of the problems facing these displays, which is that while the displays themselves can be made transparent the electronics which control them are opaque.

We now have see-through transistors made with zinc oxide and indium oxide 'nanowires', making it possible to build displays into glasses or car windscreens.

Link: Full article

[NatCh]

I guess that means backlighting is in play again. That'll make a lot of folks happy.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

In the near future the compromises that have always faced the designers of mobile devices may no longer be necessary as new forms of display and new input technologies give designers more creative license.

The practice of architecture was completely transformed in the late twentieth century as new building materials made it possible for an architect to draw the most fantastic buildings and say 'build that', instead of having to work with the physical limitations of steel or concrete.

We may be on the verge of a similar transformation in the ways we design and build the many digital devices that we use in daily life.

(Well, not quite that simple... Architecture saw incredible cost increases in advanced building designs, which is why most modern buildings don't look that much different than their older counterparts. We got two new building designs out of it... glass-front and space frame... and that was about it.)

ANYWAY, I agree that the advancements in design and fabrication could give us something radically new. We just have to wait for the visionary with deep pockets who will finance and promote such a radical new device. Not to mention... the radical new device.