The Future of Reading

Meet Electronic Paper, Ink

By: Eric Durrand

Imagine getting up in the morning, making your favorite cup of coffee, and watching the ink on yesterday’s paper re-arrange itself to show today’s latest headlines. Imagine shopping at the supermarket and seeing all the price tags change in real time when a new sale discount is announced. Or imagine reading the words THE END on the last page of that great novel, and with a few clicks on the book’s cover-buttons the ink changes to display the sequel, or any of dozens of other titles.

It may sound impossible, but it’s already a fact. Electronic Ink is here, and the electronic print revolution is about to begin. Publishers, libraries, and schools should prepare for the day where the word “book” would no longer recall the smell of fresh print – but the searchable, accessible, up-to-date nature of the Internet.

For the past decade or so, the promise of electronic reading failed to deliver life-changing applications. Despite the ease of access, more updated information, and lower cost of electronic texts – most people insisted on printing any long articles, or purchasing printed versions rather than digital versions of books. The reason is that it is extremely uncomfortable to read long texts off the screen – any screen. The low resolution relative to printed materials, and the light emitted from electronic monitors make reading torturous and tiring. Special “book readers” software, including some intriguing optical technologies like Microsoft’s ClearType, did not solve the dilemma or help the E-Books market to seriously take off.

That’s when Electronic Ink came into the scene. Electronic ink, developed simultaneously by several leading manufacturers, including Xerox-PARC, E-Ink Corporation, and Fujitsu, offers the best of both world: the comfort and portability of ink on paper, the global availability, updated nature, and ease of storage and sharing of digital information.

Digital ink is based on a thin, bendable, paper-like material composed of millions of tiny microcapsules containing charged particles. Black particles are negatively charged, and white ones are positively charged (or the opposite) – and so the image on the paper is controlled by the positive and negative electric fields produced by electrodes. It offers a resolution and ease of reading similar to paper, it does not emit light that strains and tires the eyes, and it does not require any energy in maintaining the image – meaning that the paper only consumes energy when updating – not while static!

Many practical applications have already gone to market, and soon we will see them on the streets and in people’s hands: Gyricon LLC, a Xerox subsidiary, had recently announced the release of its first commercial application of Xerox’s SmartPaper™ technology: SyncroSign™ Message Board. SyncroSign Message Board is a battery-powered Wi-Fi network sign incorporating SmartPaper technology.

Fujitsu had announced a few months back the successful development of the world’s first film substrate-based bendable color electronic paper featuring Image Memory Function. The new electronic paper features vivid color images (even more vivid than an ordinary LCD screen) that are unaffected even when the screen is bent, and features an image memory function that enables continuous display of the same image without the need for electricity.

Perhaps the most advance applications come from E-Ink Corporation, a Massachusetts-based company devoted to developing electronic ink and electronic-ink based products. E-Ink had already cooperated with many vendors to launch a number of products: including a super-thin Seiko watch with electronic ink digits, large area signs controlled from a distance, and the new promising addition: the Sony Reader.

The Sony Reader brings electronic ink to the realm of book and newspaper reading. It is a small, thin, paperback-size device with an electronic paper screen with black and white ink. The text is readable from almost any angle, has the same resolution and feel of printed text, and does not require electricity to maintain (only to change). It comes with a memory card that allows storing up to 80 average-size books, purchased in an online store similar to iTunes, and can also present PDFs, Newsfeeds and Blogs, Word Documents, and JPEG images. The Reader is set to literally change the way people read – allowing you to carry an entire library with you wherever you go, and to actually enjoy reading off an electronic device. The Sony Reader is expected to release in April, with a price tag of between $300 and $400.

The introduction of Electronic Ink brings a wealth of possibilities in retail (think smart signs, smart price tags), in shipping (think smart shipping tags), and especially in education: where the vision of an electronic book means: easily searchable, easily annotated, easily distributed, easily carried, and in the future - probably more affordable too. The electronic revolution had finally caught up with books. Don’t be left behind!