14 DAY TRIAL // It displays the contents of a newspaper, it's almost as thin and flexible as a sheet of paper, but it's far better than one. It is the e-paper, developed in Britain and produced in Germany.
Regular newspapers will most definitely become extinct as early as next year. A credit card-thin plastic displaying device will replace it starting next year. It has been developed by the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University and entered production phase at Plastic Logic in Germany. It will be as light as normal paper, and will be capable of storing old news and documents as well as show new ones as soon as it is provided them. The electronic information device boosts a novel plastic chip instead of the average silicon one, while the display is also made of thin plastic. It is as large as a letter-sized paper pad.
As Dean Baker, the Manufacturing Engineering Manager from Plastic Logic, said in an interview for the BBC, “We have paper being distributed all over the country which is consumed on that day and then discarded into the bin. This doesn't need to be the case. All of that contact could be transmitted electronically and stored on a single e-reader, with the same visual appeal as paper. Both business travelers and private users will really appreciate having all their paperwork on a single device when they're on the move”.
Newspaper nostalgists will perhaps let go of their sympathy for the paper-based information source if they take a moment to ponder on the waste of massive amounts of wood and paper, its industrial subsequent result, out of which their beloved daily informer is made, and on the recycling problems related to it. On the other hand, this might put loads of people currently employed in the newspaper printing and distribution industry out of work.