MoM on the Toilet, anyone?

Saw this interesting article on a blog at The Telegraph newspaper.

It struck me as interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it describes how the world's first factory to mass produce flexible plastic displays, to essentially mimic paper, will be up and running next year.

So for all those people out there who like to stick the newspaper under their arm, head straight for the toilet while they utter the immortal words "I'm off to the library", this could rock your world. Alternatively if you like to sit out by your pool under the warm sun and cast your eyes over the news, then it might appeal to you too.

Yes, a flexible plastic sheet that is actually a TFT display (that's the technology that's inside LCD displays) that you can hold in your hand like holding a printed copy of Business Week, National Geographic or The National Enquirer even (click here for an interesting article in Slate about The Enquirer).

How interesting is that.

The second thing that is interesting relates to how plastics and electronics are usually manufactured. Now I might have my numbers a bit off here but I'm pretty sure that it takes a huge amount of resources, not least things like water, to make these kinds of devices and then to deal with them when nobody wants them any more.

So for all the nuisance of paper and recycling it, surely it's going to be more costly on every level to produce "plastic paper". Still, it would be cool to have this in your bag and whip it out and have all the cool stuff that you want to read without needing a laptop or needing to squint at a 3.5 inch screen.

While I was writing, I was thinking.. how much longer will the term newspaper be the defining word in the world of news publishing. I wrote earlier The Telegraph Newspaper. It's so much more than a newspaper now, if you are in this world of publishing. Besides the main paper, there's the website, a whole host of blogs, RSS feeds (now that I finally worked out what they are), podcasts and so on.

Will there come a day, or has it come already and I missed it, where people just don't use the term newspaper anymore, except to clarify that they mean the print version of their content.

And finally, MoM is my way of abbreviating "Mystery of Modernity". Maybe I should get some T-Shirts and Coffee Mugs made up.