Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hplabsz!taylor
From: seven@nuchat.UUCP (David Paulsen)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: Paper versus Computer Monitors
Message-ID: <1886@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
Date: 12 Apr 88 16:44:55 GMT
Sender: taylor@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM
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Approved: taylor@hplabs

Gary Benson writes:
  
> ... Even a very clever interfaces cannot match the simplicity of laying 
> a finger between two pieces of paper!

Excellent point.

> At one time I was a strong proponent of the "paperless" office, but
> arguments like these and my own experience have shown me that such a
> thing is probably unrealistic.  In fact, I predict that computer screens
> will always be second choice over paper for many users besides editors.

I agree with you for the time being.  BUT, technology marches ever onward.
How about a compromise?  Specifically, I'm thinking of a different sort of
display peripheral entirely... imagine this:

Flat-screen LCD displays have improved 1000% in just the last two years.
Think forward a few years, when incredibly thin, flat, FLEXIBLE liquid
crystal displays become available.  (In your local Toys'R'Us, xmas 1989! :-)

You could take fifty or a hundred of these electronic "pages", bind them
somehow into a book format, and then display information on each page,
just like a book... a user could flip through the constantly-updated 
screens like leafing thru a magazine.  The 50-100 page limitation is
arbitrary; it's the same as buffer size on your editor.  If you want
to "read" a 400 page manual with your 50 page LCD magazine, you'd access 
50 page hunks at a time.  Text, graphics, animation could all be generated
within user control... real-time reports (inventories, accounting) could
be updated on the fly.  How about touch-sensitive page numbers?  Press
the right-hand page number and you'd "turn a page", without actually
doing so mechanically.  Hold it down, and do a rip-sort, the same way
I frantically fan thru a manual trying to find something in a hurry...
of course, there's always the infinitley user-friendly constantly-updated
index/glossary/help-files in the back. :-)

One LCD magazine would be all you'd need to access all the books in your
library.  If you're like me, and have four or five books always open at
a time, then you'd have four of these magazine thingees.  Naturally, this
being the future, they're incredibly cheap: smaller, single page versions
are used for advertising leaflets, business cards, greeting cards... all
animated of course with brilliant colors and constantly shifting text.

I know, I know... Buck Rogers.  But hey, think how far LCD technology has
progressed -- we're a coupla years away from flat TVs you can hang on your
wall; what'll be available in 1999?   Now, if I can only figure out a way
to get rid of that huge ugly fiber-optic bundle trailing out of my _BYTE_...

David Paulsen