The persistance of paper; the search to stabilise pixel Announced repeatedly since the late 90’s there’s a perpetually upcoming technology that pretends to substitute paper. It’s the so called ‘electronic paper’, ‘e-paper,’ or ‘electronic ink’, a special kind of display made not by pixels and light, but by electrically charged micro-balls (a sort of pixels if you want) that can turn black or white. One of the few challenges is its promises is to reduce the clutter in your bookshelf. But, what is the price of this ‘promise’? To me it’s similar to the never realized ‘paperless’ office, advertised from the 80’s by the personal computer industry. It’s a promise of virtualisation, disembodiment of a heavy physicality you’d like to reduce to have more. And it thrills to own more and more content, because digitally, it’s easy to copy, share or simply store. (Alessandro Ludovico - The Persistence of Paper)
(...) pixel and paper have inherently different properties and sensibilities, and this is also how we should approach them. Yes...this seems to be easier said than done. (Nat Muller - The Magnet Reader 2)