Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/11/16/young-ladies-illustrated-prime.html
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The usage examples they offer seem very contrived and impractical to me. Like they are searching for a problem for an interesting solution. I’m not sure if the ability to crumple these up would make them superior to tablets.
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I love the bit in the video when the narrator says, “All experts like the combination of natural paper properties with our integrated illuminations.”
That would be impressive indeed if it wasn’t obvious puffery.
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Not sure if this is solving any real problems, but I like their choice of a clipboard as a charging device for the paper.
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“All the traditional properies of paper”
I could do without the disposable property myself.
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Someone is looking at this and thinking, “How do I turn this into a voting technology?”
Seems like a long way to go just to keep the sensation of writing on paper with a ball point. So why not use an oled dot matrix instead of the hassle of having a custom arrangement of electroluminescent elements for each document. Then you may as well use a tablet or e-ink device with a touch screen instead of an elaborate pen and paper setup.
Also handy for finding secret entrances to dragon caves and such.
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interesting reflection on BB viewers
Couldn’t you get most of that with a sheet of normal paper, soft pen and a touch screen behind it?
I was excited this could be an alternative to Dynamicland with similar goals. However, after watching the video, I’m less sure. It seems unclear whether this would encourage collaboration and authorship in the same way, due to it’s constraint of being plugged into the controller module. Would a table-wide wireless controller
When I visited Dynamicland, I had the same mental confusion as the other commentators. What was the difference between Dynamicland and a giant table-sized tablet? When the tablet stops working, it becomes a black mirror. When Dynamicland stops working, you still have a bunch of pieces of paper and craft tools. I think this example was used to demonstrate how much the computing environment depended on accessible materials.
If you had a giant illumi-paper environment and the controllers stopped working, I guess you still have all these papers lying around? But the dependence on the Android app concerns me…
At a local exploratorium they have had some interactive exhibits similar to Dynamicland. Each one was just single purpose and one some level the docents pater included something akin to “revolutionary”. Watching my preschooler interact with an exhibit, “so simple a preschooler can interact with it” get both frustrated and bored with the novelty rather quick.
Tossing a physical puck that can split virtual light was not as interesting as using real physical plastic prisms, filters and lenses. The “virtual biome” table where one could add or subtract food, animals, mountains, water, etc… was equally frustrating, not because it was too abstract, but because of scale. “It should be iPad sized.” The lag on both was also awful. So we sat and observed people. Most people didn’t quite get how to interact meaningfully. And some young teen ever 5-10 minutes or so would salt the world with too many predators. As the whole thing was also projected on a screen behind the main exhibit, it could have as easily been a set computers using interfaces people were used to using.
I am wondering if all this focus on externally projected interfaces and interactions are just a short lived technological branch will find some niche , but will never take off because we will all have some sort of networked digital overlay with us at all times, via glasses or something.
From an art perspective this is really neat. There may be a short lived second golden age of illuminated manuscripts that are also interactive. Something like the reactive book in Stephenson’s The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. I could see amazing art books, and eventually… Happy Meal toys and magazine covers.
At one point digital watches were more expensive than some of the finest mechanical wrist watches of the same period. Eventually, they became premiums in Happy Meals and cereal boxes. Aluminum and Rayon were once super expensive. (I remember my grandmother had an aluminum broach that nobody thought to keep because it was aluminum, but once it was a super fancy piece of jewelry.) My parents bought the National Geographic with the sounds of whales, because it had a record in it.
They did the same for the first hologram cover issue of National Geographic. I didn’t run out and get Esquire’s e-ink magazine because, I don’t read the magazine. My point is, that the technology may become inexpensive and ubiquitous or stay a novelty.
I bet that many iterations from this, we may find something like this to be the backup display on vehicles and other devices where an interactive display is needed in an emergency. It is also how I picture the interface on simple semi-disposable items to be. Perhaps it will be on a label cuff we stick on a bulk food container at home, a luggage tag, or the side of medication (there is a good use for interactive paper). Likely, it will also be used on fancy business cards, advertisements, and pogs and collectible card games like.
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