Just the other day, I sat watching the futuristic film Minority Report. I was taken aback by the digital newspapers and animated cereal boxes in the film, not because of the concept, but because we're close to such technologies being a reality.
It might not come as a surprise then, that some people are beginning to create exciting concept designs based around digital paper type technologies. Yesterday, Sun Technology's Chandan, a Security Coordination Team Engineer, posted in his blog pictures and details of an all-in-one card.
This card would basically serve as a thin-client... a very thin one at at. With credit card dimensions, the display would allow the user to surf the Internet, read documents and so forth. The card wouldn't need a great deal of processing power, as the applications would be run on the server. So, all the card would need is a Bluetooth transceiver, battery, GPS, WiFi and processor. Oh, it would function as a smart card too, allowing it to be used to pay for things and serve as ID.
Of course, fitting all of this onto a card-thin, card-sized device is, right now, impossible. However, Chandan sees such a technology as something we're likely to see in one form or another in the year to come. We're inclined to agree, and while some of the ideas put forward seem a bit far fetched now, or impractical, we're sure at least some of these will be realised before 2006 is out.
Check out Chandan's blog entry, including lovely GIMP'd concept images, over at the Sun blogs website.
