E-Ink is a company that's been around for a
while and had to be patient until its revolutionary technology hit
the market in any kind of meaningful way.
E-Ink basically
understood that most information is still imparted through reading
and that the future of information is the computer - but who wants
to go blind reading from a computer screen?
So E-Ink
came up with a kind of electronic paper that wouldn't need a
backlight and so wouldn't hurt your eyes. Using instead the light
available in the room to reflect off the pixels, they invented the
base for what will one day be the technology in use on every
computer screen, cell phone and e-reader.
E-Ink got their big push with Amazon's Kindle
which made use of their massive inventory to push ebooks on a public
still attached to sewn bundles of dead tree pulp. Sony felt the
competition and halved the price of their reader and did a deal with
Google to make its digital library available for download to the
Song Reader and the ereader came of age.
Then Esquire Magazine actually featured an E-Ink
cover:
E-Ink is the future but it's a scary one. Do we really
want to see advertisements on the shelves of supermarkets
encouraging us to take advantage of offers? TV screens on the back
of seats on buses bombaring us with more commericals to offset the
rising price of gas? Menus that warn you about your calory
intake?
Minority Report is almost here but on the bright
side, electronic paper may be the way to save the forests as we can
all throw our printers away.
