Version 2, Now For Paper

Paperless – oh that word. It’s been years since that concept and objective have been flaunted around. We do manage to achieve a certain level of “paperless-ness.” More than half of the people I know do not have printers in their home setup. And companies are having varying level of success (or failure) to rid themselves of paper. But what do you know… we still have paper, and for good reason.

I still prefer my pen and pad for capturing ideas and random thoughts while on the go, or even when I’m still. Kindle is nice but I like physical books for many of my reading (but not carrying) pursuits.

And so, now we have, wait for it, paper 2.0. You read that right; they’re versioning paper now. Developed by the Taiwanese research group Industrial Technology Research Institute, the i2R e-paper (as they call it) is a flexible liquid crystal panel. It uses thermal action (akin to fax machines) to (re)write on the surface but requires no additional power to retain the print nor does it require backlighting for the print to be visible. The i2R panel is said to be rewritable up to 260 times.

That would be useful for posters and banners but not for books.