Or maybe not.

After all, it’s been a solid three and a half decades since the Gyricon (the basis for modern electronic paper technology, even if the name makes you think of a carnival ride) was invented, serious work on e-paper seems to have started in the late 80s and early 90s, there’s been more than a couple of hype points along the way, and… well let’s just say e-less paper is still winning quite handily. But maybe, just maybe, we’re inching towards that magical tipping point where e-paper finally makes it mark.

But even if we’re nowhere close to that point, this interview transcript with Nick Sheridon is an interesting read – he’s the father of e-paper, and he goes back through the history of what’s happened, and you even get to see words like “electrocapillarity” used in proper context (I think). A couple of key points that he made were…

On barriers to e-paper adoption: No technology is sufficiently paper-like, yet. By this, I mean a display medium that is thin, flexible, capable of storing readable images without power consumption, highly readable in ambient light, and has good resolution, high whiteness, and good contrast — and is pretty cheap.

As an aside, I thought “paper like” was a sufficient enough description of what, um, paper is like, but the point is well made  – more innovation is needed.

And how does Nick see the future of e-paper unfolding?

I like to tell people that the holy grail of e-paper will be embodied as a cylindrical tube, about 1 centimeter in diameter and 15 to 20 centimeters long, that a person can comfortably carry in his or her pocket. The tube will contain a tightly rolled sheet of e-paper that can be spooled out of a slit in the tube as a flat sheet, for reading, and stored again at the touch of a button. Information will be downloaded—there will be simple user interface—from an overhead satellite, a cell phone network, or an internal memory chip. This document reader will be used for e-mail, the Internet, books downloaded from a global digital library that is currently under construction, technical manuals, newspapers (perhaps in larger format), magazines, and so forth, anywhere on the planet. It will cost less than $100, and nearly everyone will have one!

That does sound kind of neat – but when did $100 becomes the cut off price for everything? Are they trying to compete with the laptops we’re trying to get to every kid in the world?

And what does Xerox (who funds the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center that this idea has emerged from) think about all of this? Well I can’t say for sure, but the following quote doesn’t sound good:

Xerox closed its Gyricon operation in December 2005 for financial reasons. (I was director of research. I am now working independently and doing some consulting.)

In fairness though, he does mention at least a dozen companies and a bunch of other start ups working on e-paper in one way or another. Maybe they’ll pull something off soon… which would be truly electrophoretic (another word from the paper, but this time almost certainly used out of context).