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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 75th
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.
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