A scribe enjoyed a one to one relationship with his reader, Gutenberg embraced the one to many relationship, is digital printing in fact a step forward?

Communication by way of the printed word has been a way of life for centuries. Even today, when everywhere we look we are bombarded with modern forms of communication, paper remains ubiquitous. On an equal par, traditional ink has also maintained its popularity.

Users praise the excellent resolution it offers, as well as its high contrast over a range of viewing angles, the fact that it requires no external power to retain its image, and weighs and costs very little too. It is no wonder then that traditional ink on paper has continued to flourish, in a rapidly expanding digital world that was expected to all but do away with it. Technology experts do feel, however, that ink on paper is lacking in one of the essential traits that computer displays offer: as one expert explains, it lacks ‘instantaneous erasure and reuse, millions of times without wearing out.’

Over the last twenty years the technology industry has been searching for a way to overcome this, by attempting to manufacture electronic paper and electronic ink. Analysts have been hopeful that electronic paper, or ‘digital paper’ as it is also known, will set the stage for the future - in the shape of the paperless office. For more than two decades, the development of digital paper has been described as one of the technology world’s ‘holy grails’, but the prospect of using digital paper, as a substitute for the real thing, is now closer than ever.

Digital paper
The development of electronic ink on to digital paper could see an end to the enormous damage to the environment that the endless pulping of trees for our paper ensures. It could also usher in an era where traditional books and magazines are transferred to thin, flexible page displays that will revolutionise the manner in which we read. Whilst experts see the development and production of electronic paper and electronic ink as being a response to modern day, consumer demand, one question that we as consumers are faced with is, do we really want electronic paper to replace our ‘traditional paper’, in our everyday lives?

Will it turn into just one more technical hassle that will make our lives harder, not easier, nor more advanced, as we would hope? It seems that regardless of what our answers are to these questions, it may be some time yet before we can actually buy our newspapers or magazines on digital paper format.

In a recent article, designer and researcher Bill Buxton declared that the technologies that are going to change our lives in the next ten years in the same way blackboards revolutionised education in classrooms in the 1800s, the development of electronic paper and electronic ink, will according to Buxton, do the same thing to our everyday lives. He believes that the technology behind electronic paper will allow us to one day have electronic wallpaper hanging in our living rooms.

Electronic ink
One of the earliest attempts to introduce electronic paper, or ‘electric paper’ as it was originally called, came as a response to the poor visual quality of the computer displays available in the early 1970s. Inventor Nicholas K. Sheridon recalls that his motivation was to find ‘a display material with as many of the properties of paper as possible’, but back then ‘finding a paper substitute was not [his] main motivation’. Only now, three decades on, has research finally gone into full swing. Analysts are predicting that newspapers, magazines and even books, could all by 2010 be regularly published using electronic paper and electronic ink, and its success will be down to a healthy competition that has developed between two firms. Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory are leading the way in this field.

Both companies base their core technologies on tiny, electrically charged beads with the imagining capability controlled electronically. With the developments made by these two companies alone, in the digital paper industry over recent years, it will not be very long before electronic paper and ink will penetrate into mainstream life for everyday use.
What exactly is digital paper? Technically speaking digital paper is a thin, flexible polymer sheet, which looks like traditional paper. It is heavier than normal paper, and experts acknowledge that it will ‘never be as light as paper.’ The thickness and heavier weight of electronic paper is due to the microscopic electronic ink particles that are contained between two polymer sheets, which can display as either white or black in response to an electrical charge. Electronic paper is also reflective, like real paper, so it can be read in any light. As it is, several companies have recently developed and are continuing to develop commercial applications of this digital paper technology.

Big savings
Gyricon LLC have developed ‘SmartPaper’, an ‘e-paper technology’, which made its debut in an e-paper pricing-sign system in retail stores, earlier this year. Chief technology officer at Gyricon, Robot Sprague, explains how it works. ‘The sign is controlled by software that links it wirelessly to an in-store pricing database. We’ll replace the paper pricing signs on each retail rack in stores with an electronic paper sign, which is wirelessly networked to the store’s central computer so the price can be updated instantly.’ In this way, the IT departments are empowered with the ability to control a lot of ‘signage and information around an entire building or campus from one centralised computing point’, Sprague says.

A few years ago, electronic paper made its debut in a commercial environment, at a department store in the United States. There, electronic signs, which were used as in-store displays were connected via a wireless link. The message on any individual or group of signs was changed remotely, simply at the push of a button. There is no doubt that electronic paper used in this context will save companies the tremendous costs of changing in-store signs on a regular basis. In the United States, the Federated Department Stores, Macy’s parent company, for example, is currently spending more than $250,000 a week on changing its in-store signs, so for them and thousands of companies like them, renewable signage could prove highly desirable.

The technology behind electronic ink, or ‘e-ink’ as it is frequently referred to is based on electrophoresis, the movement imparted by an electric field to charged particles that are suspended in a liquid.
The limitation

A few years ago, a prototype of E Ink was introduced in the form of ‘store signs’, and tested in several stores across America. It was also tested by an American Newspaper Organisation, for their headline displays, and it was even tried out in sandwich boards worn on the city streets. Research then found the signs effective in increasing store traffic and departmental sales, but it was also noted that there was a limit to the choice of fonts, colours and graphics that e-ink could produce. Today however, as technology continues to develop, makers of e-ink hope that they will be able to produce displays that are capable of showing 4,096 colours.

Whilst this type of technology has yet to catch on, skeptics point to the limitations of the technology behind electronic paper. One such limitation is the lack of a varied colour spectrum. Furthermore, the paper technology, as of yet, cannot support full-motion video, because updating or rewriting a page takes far too long. However, all of this could change. To quote one analyst, ‘in three to five years, we’ll see the second generation technologies from the companies that are launching products now that will probably have better characteristics, reduced costs and add flexibility to the mix.’

Whilst experts look to the many possible uses of electronic paper and electronic ink, consumers want to know exactly what it will be used for. Will it replace our newspapers, magazines and books? Or used in shops for their signs? And if it is going to infiltrate our everyday lives, exactly how reliable will it be? It seems until these questions are answered, and until we see exactly how the market and technology will evolve - we will be sticking to the real thing.