Nature recently published a story ( Published online 3 September 2008 | Nature 455, 8-9 (2008) | doi:10.1038/455008a; ) on what the next hot technologies could be by 2018. It interviewed 10 well known academics & business people from around the world. What's the Next Google by 2018 ? Here's part 1 of 10; e-Paper
Bill Buxton, Principal researcher, Microsoft,Toronto, Canada suggests ELECTRONIC PAPER
"I subscribe to Melvin Kranzberg's second law of technology: invention is the mother of necessity.
Although technologies are created to fulfil needs, each also creates them; the next generation of technologies will deliver the promises of what we already have. The history of communication technologies over the past century tells me that anything that's going to impact on the next ten years is going to be ten years old already. (The components that made Google possible ten years ago were already there ten years earlier, with the creation of the web.) One prime candidate is electronic paper, displays that are as easy to view in ambient light conditions as paper and that consume hardly any power. It started with E Ink a decade ago; now we are seeing it in devices such as Amazon's Kindle, which I would say has not yet matured but has certainly reached late adolescence. Kindle and other readers are really like the Ford Model T in terms of what will be available in five years. I think with this technology will come a dramatic change in our attitude towards paper. Our attachment to paper and books is wonderful, charming and quite understandable. I can't stand reading stuff on my computer. But this technology will make us question whether we can really afford the 500,000 trees that are consumed by publishing and newsprint in North America each week."
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