Re: [Washington Post] Printing's Future May Be Written in E Ink.

Tom Whore (Whetgrrl@aol.com)
Tue, 4 Aug 1998 18:49:24 EDT


I don't know - I'm picturing a remote-control Etch-a-Sketch. What about those
of us who are polarity impaired (people who when holding a demagnetizer render
it useless) - what do you think would happen to the printing in our hands?

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Message: "Future of Journalism" (Atlantic Monthly)
Written by Geege on Sat Jun 20 10:30:52 1998

Alan,

With a hard copy in my lap, it's gotten to where I miss the feel of the mouse
under hand.

Geege

. . . which prompted a salacious reply from said Alan. I prefer the screen
for periodicals and newspapers for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is
presentation. Hyperlinks and interactivity are indespensible to me now, but
I'm still unlikely to read a novel or anything of great length online.

I'm more interested in display devices than in E Ink for personal reading.
Capital ventures such as Colorado Micro Display (CMD) are developing goggle-
like devices and smaller - the inside surfaces of the lenses serving as the
'screen.' These would provide me with what I miss most about a hard copy -
portability, and the ability to take it to bed with me.

Geege again

In a message dated 98-08-04 08:03:48 EDT, you, adam@cs.caltech.edu, deigned to
write:

<< The Washington Post has now jumped on the E Ink bandwagon that we forked
from Fortune in July

http://xent.ics.uci.edu/FoRK-archive/jun98/0298.html

The following article appears at

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-08/03/036l-080398-idx.html

but is included below for the lazy URL clicker. Jacobson is completely
right: nothing beats paper for presentation of information. This is why
my greenbook diaries are handwritten in paper notebooks and not typed
onto some computer screen.

I also like the concept of "a page that prints itself." I wonder why
Xerox PARC doesn't have a project like this going on right now.

Electronic newspapers by Y2K do not seem likely. But someday before we
die, certainly...