Canadian researcher develops 'paperphone'

The next wave of technology for the paperless office or workplace may just be a paper computer, now being developed by a Canadian university. Roel Vertegaal, creator of the paper computer, said that he expects thin-film technology may replace current smartphones in five to 10 years. “This is the future. Everything is going to look and feel like this within five years ... This computer looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive paper. You interact with it by bending it into a cell phone, flipping the corner to turn pages, or writing on it with a pen," Vertegaal said in a release posted on the blog of the Queen’s University Human Media Lab where he is directo. Called the “PaperPhone," the smartphone prototype is claimed to do everything that a smartphone can, like store books, play music, or make phone calls. Its display includes a 9.5-cm diagonal thin-film flexible electronic ink (e-Ink) display. E-Ink is the same technology used in e-readers like the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook, although present gadgets using them are rigid. “The flexible form of the display makes it much more portable that any current mobile computer: it will shape with your pocket," said the release from the Human Media Lab. It said being able to store and interact with documents on larger versions of these light, flexible computers means offices will no longer require paper or printers. Also, they use no power when nobody is interacting with them. “The paperless office is here. Everything can be stored digitally and you can place these computers on top of each other just like a stack of paper, or throw them around the desk," Vertegaal said. Vertegaal is to unveil his paper computer on May 10 at the Association of Computing Machinery’s CHI 2011 (Computer Human Interaction) conference in Vancouver, the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction. The development team included researchers Byron Lahey and Win Burleson of the Motivational Environments Research Group at Arizona State University (ASU), Audrey Girouard and Aneesh Tarun from the Human Media Lab at Queen’s University, Jann Kaminski and Nick Colaneri, director of ASU’s Flexible Display Center, and Seth Bishop and Michael McCreary, the VP R&D of E Ink Corporation. A separate article on PC Magazine said that Vertegaal noted only three revolutionary developments in the evolution of visual displays: the cathode ray tube (CRT), the liquid crystal display (LCD), and now, the flexible display. “There are some real benefits for having this as your smartphone... One of the issues with smartphones is that they don’t fit well in your pocket, when you drop them they break, they hold like bricks in your hand, they’re not very lightweight, and most importantly their screen real estate is limited. What’s cool about these screens is that you can unfold them," he said. “What’s really cool about a book is that you can crack the spine and flip through pages. You can do something similar with this. With this screen, all you need is to press your thumb slightly downward and it’ll sense it. The Kindle is kind of notoriously hard to navigate beyond one page," he added. But he said they have yet to fully test its practical uses, such as durability. “We haven’t actually tried that—creasing it. It’s a $7,000 prototype, so we’re pretty careful with it. If you were to put a crease in it, you would break it. But there are engineering solutions for that," he said. Vertegaal added he remains hugely optimistic about the device’s potential, envisioning a world where most devices adopt some aspect of the technology. “PaperPhone is only a first instantiation of this bigger picture, and there’s going to be lots more. Everything is going to look and feel like this within five years," he said. — TJD, GMA News