I keep telling publishers that electronic paper isn't science fiction but science fact, technologiy that will go into commercial production this decade. I'm particular a fan of the rollable versions. For example, the picture above is of Polymer Vision B&W prototype demonstrated on May 27th at the International Society for Information Display's trade show in Seattle. (High resolution photos of this prototype are here.) the February edition of Nature, detailed how these flexible displays use active-matrix organic transistors, have video capabilities, and can be rolled to a radius of one centimeter (4/10ths of an inch) without significant loss in performance. In September, I'd published an illustration of Cambridge Technologies' e-paper 6-by-4 inch color prototype that rolls up into a pen and other technologies demonstrated at the Seybold Future of Print conference in San Francisco.

What is driving manufacturers' adoption of these technologies isn't any desires to serve markets of people who want to read electronic newspaper or magazines, but the technological fact that e-paper displays consume 1/50th to 1/100th. That means a PDA, or mobile phone, tablet device, or rollable screen that utilized e-paper display technologies will much, much more battery life that an equivalent device equipped with current LCD displays.