I propose a different view on e-paper. I have grown up with Mac computers, and the internet, I run a small publishing company and adore the physical aesthetic of the printed and bound book. I write journalistically and literarily and run a new research and development site, taking a hard look at cutting edge technologies.

Occasionally, I read actual printed newspapers, and the newspaper format (printed or online —online they work best when they try to do something like the broad-scope content presentation that broadsheet provides [considering that hyperlinks can help save space and therefore designs don't necessarily resemble the print format]).

I think it’s vital to take into account that print journalists want to see the broadsheet format, in part because they are people who understand both the production and the consumption elements of the newspaper marketplace.

The key to this particular question by a reporter is whether scanning significant amounts of information simultaneously would be possible. We tend to think of on-screen reading (i.e. digital) as an exercise where size is counterproductive and the goal is the most minuscule. However, as graphic designers understand, there is something liberating about surface area, depending on your intentions.

E-paper could serve exactly that function. Imagine a sheet of e-paper the width of two human hairs, but which is more or less the size of a broadsheet newspaper. It can fold or unfold, and the outer surface will show digital contents either way, adjusting to the size you have “requested” to see, based on the folding.

Due to its extreme light weight, such a format would be ideal for expanding the usability and user-freedom of browsing digital content. You could see multiple pages (either of contained pdf-type documents or eventually real-time online browsing — limited at present by e-paper’s low computing intensity).

This provides for a much richer end-user experience and the possibility of presenting a broader array of information to the reader. A Google search, if one could work on an e-paper single-sheet foldable display, such as I describe, could have 80 or 100 “first-page” hits, instead of 10 or 15.

Advertising possibilities explode with this format, and that is precisely why the broadsheet became such a global standard for serious news organizations: it allowed the simultaneous presentation of massive amounts of textual and visual information, in-depth reports, and the advertising necessary to finance the operation in a serious way.

I’m thinking, specifically, of these visions of future newspapers in science fiction and the cartridge-based Teleputers in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. When these stories were created, they modeled themselves after extensions of current technologies, rather than thinking about new technologies that could arise and disrupt the further development of old technologies (such as the Internet).

Electronic paper versions of the newspaper don’t yet innovate in any sort of meaningful way and certainly don’t provide any value over current digital media (which has proliferated on a multitude of devices, like phones for example, whereas current e-readers have only a singular, limited purpose).

So, yeah, these are completely misguided visions of the future (but aren’t all they all? In 10, 20 or 30 years time, I’m sure we’ll be talking about the demise of the Internet to something newer and better in ways).

For books, yes, e-paper is an innovation because one device can hold many, many books and doesn’t strain the eyes when reading for long periods of time like back-lit screens can do. But there’s a very small market of people that want locally-stored archives of their favorite newspapers.