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fictional ePaper
I have always been a big fan of science fiction and fantasy. Read pretty much everything in that whole section of the library near my house by the time I was done with junior high. I presume that it had something to do with my desire to design stuff, and expect great things from current technology.
I like how speculative fiction still serves as a launching point for much actual technology. Of course, we’re most interested in handheld devices and interfaces. All too often these are just current technology, maybe with springs. Or they are not referenced at all. Or they are lame and wrong, and/or are out of date almost immediately.
So imagine my nerdy glee watching the pilot for Caprica (a sort of prequel to Battlestar Galactica) and someone pulls a piece of paper out of her pocket, and it’s a touchscreen, internet-connected tablet of some sort:
Click the image to play the clip (1.9mb DivX encoded)
This immediately became one of my favorite devices ever, including other fictional ones.
- It’s all folded up! Not just theoretically rolled then magically dead-flat and rigid for the interactive shot –they showed it staying sorta creased, and just lived with the lack of flatness and relative floppyness.
- It’s on a realistic network! A minor plot point is that the message didn’t arrive. Shortly after it was sent, the train exploded and the network hadn’t gotten the whole message yet. (If you complain this is a spoiler, the explosion and death was shown and discussed in detail in the trailers.)
- It’s text! Despite being far enough in the “future” (it’s also in another civilization, so not exactly our future) there’s no insistence everyone loves video phones. Text is perfect for a crowded train, for this message content.
- It’s predictive! Or something. Look close at how the keys are working. Starts with a full alphabet, then most likely characters appear below in some manner. It’s hard to tell what is going on, but it is played so it’s natural, and the apostrophe is never typed, but inserted automatically. I like it.
- It’s dimensional! Notice how the sending button (unlabeled among three, which is my least favorite part) is designed to be grabbed. Pinch the edge of the sheet
- It’s an appliance! By which I mean not just that it’s seamless, invisible, and easy to use, but that it’s apparently a single-purpose device. When opened, it has options which appear to all be about paper-based interactions. Create new messages, write things, something else. It’s not (apparently) a video player, a phone, or anything else. It does what a piece of paper should do, which is let your read and write words, and not much else.
- It’s cheap! I assume. Else why would it be folded up and tossed in a pocket? I presume everyone can have one, all the time, at this sort of convenience and cost.
If anyone knows, I’d love to find out who did the design on this thing.
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