An electronic newspaper, one that has dynamic content which updates instantly, but still rolls and folds like regular paper has been the staple of many a science fiction book or movie, such as for instance the Minority Report. While such a reality is still quite far away, interesting advances are being made, which serve to blur the line between computer screen and newspaper.

Esquire Magazine’s October issue, is celebrating its 75^th anniversary with a special glimpse into the future of Electronic paper, and other companies are creating electronic newspaper readers which are getting more and more thin, lightweight and with larger displays.

Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader, released in November last year, offers subscriptions to online newspapers through its internet link, but now specialized newspaper reading devices are being developed:

Recently, the UK’s Plastic Logic, a company specialized in electronic paper technology has recently created, and will unveil at the Demo conference tomorrow, a new, lightweight, plastic newspaper reader. The device is not yet named, nor does it have a price, as tomorrow’s presentation is only a tech demo. However, the reader is looking impressive already.

With a large display, twice the size of Amazon’s Kindle and much thinner, the reader looks a lot more like a newspaper, and indeed with wireless updating, and a copier-paper format that can be used to mimic print edition formats, this device’s successors may prove to be the future of newspapers.

About 65% of a newspaper company’s production costs consist of printing, transport, raw materials, all of which will be done away with in the advent of new, electronic format of papers. The only problem would be working out an acceptable subscription fee as the newspapers’ own websites already display the same information as the printed edition, only for free. Nevertheless, with growing costs of production and transport in the wake of diminishing planetary resources, this may be not only an economically sound solution, but an ecologically friendly one as well.