Emak Mafu Labs Blog

You wake up on Sunday morning, reach for the newspaper beside your bed, press the update button, and the latest news streams in. It looks like a newspaper, feels like a newspaper, but hidden within the paper is digital ink and a wi-fi connection.

Digital ink has always fascinated me, and I think we are 5 to 10 years away from seeing it go mainstream. The obvious companies to push it to market will be Amazon, a publisher, or a newspaper. The business model could be that you subscribe to the service and get the hardware for free.

An outfit called plastic logic has some cool working prototypes that you can see here. Classic case of great technology presented really badly. Back to the future.

As the power requirements for such a device would be relatively low it could be powered by movement. The amount of paper saved by these devices would be huge, as well as the energy saved in hauling printed material around the world.

The first phase would be a monochrome image, but eventually these devices will be full colour with video and audio. The latter could be a disturbance on the tube so you can listen to stories on your wi-fi headphones.

And the reason for such a device? As our lives become more and more intertwined with technology we will inevitably yearn for the lo-fi days. The only problem is that the world will be moving too fast for that. A newspaper will be out of date before it gets tot the news stand. So we will start to disguise technology. Flashy, chrome gadgets will be replaced by devices that blend into our surroundings.