Revolutionary new paper computer shows flexible future for smartphones and tablets

Queen's University ^ | May 4, 2011 | Unknown

[decimon]

KINGSTON, ONTARIO – The world’s first interactive paper computer is set to revolutionize the world of interactive computing.

“This is the future. Everything is going to look and feel like this within five years,” says creator Roel Vertegaal, the director of Queen’s University Human Media Lab,. “This computer looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive paper. You interact with it by bending it into a cell phone, flipping the corner to turn pages, or writing on it with a pen.”

The smartphone prototype, called PaperPhone is best described as a flexible iPhone – it does everything a smartphone does, like store books, play music or make phone calls. But its display consists of a 9.5 cm diagonal thin film flexible E Ink display. The flexible form of the display makes it much more portable that any current mobile computer: it will shape with your pocket.

[decimon]

Talking through a paper ping.

[Two Kids' Dad]

Soon we’ll all be commuting to the workplace on our Segway scooters to use our paper computers. Oh wait...

[philman_36]

Professor Roel Vertegaal's PaperPhone is best described as a flexible iPhone.

[bmwcyle]

Good we can kill more trees. I hope we get some more old growth.

[ShadowAce]

[TSgt]

Great, more videos of crying hippies...

Hippies Crying because of Dead Tree
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VThQr8fDiLA

[Still Thinking]

This reminds me of a product called "kinagrams" in Neal Stephenson's Anathem. They're little animated figures used in lieu of normal languange, for things as simple as the laundry instruction marks on the tag in your shirt. They become so ubiquitous that even people who know how to read regular language don't bother to because they don't encounter any occasion where they have to. Good book.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

They had a gadget like this on the recently deceased science fiction show ‘Caprica’. That one was pretty snazzy.

[antiRepublicrat]

It’s not going to work as a touch device unless it can be made stiff. Imagine trying to dial a phone number on paper with it flip-flopping everywhere.

[martin_fierro]

I want a big (thin) screen!

[martin_fierro]

It’s not going to work as a touch device unless it can be made stiff.

[GOPJ]

Think of the possibilities beyond tech - car interiors customized to each family driver. Wallpaper that changes patterns, cabinets and flooring switched in seconds. Shirts and dresses incorporating any color and pattern ever created - at the push of a button...

[SunkenCiv]

The nice thing about a 3x5 spiral notebook, besides price, is that the needed pen can be stored inside the spiral wire.