My young-YA/middle-grade fantasy Fireboy, already a finalist for Best Young Adult Novel in this year’s Aurora Awards and finalist for a 2027 Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award in the Northern Lights Division, has just been …
Had a great time being part of the cast of Regina Lyric Musical Theatre‘s production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I played Fogg (the insane asylum keeper) and also sang in …
My young-YA/middle-grade fantasy Fireboy, a nominee for Best Young Adult Novel in this year’s Aurora Awards, is also a finalist for the 2027 Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award in the Northern Lights Division. This is …
I’m thrilled to announce that I’m up for two Aurora Awards this year! Fireboy is on the ballot for Best Young Adult Novel, and The Worldshapers is once again on the ballot for Best Fan …
I spent a good chunk of today at Wordbridge, the annual writers’ conference in Lethbridge, Alberta. My main reason for coming was to launch a Shadowpaw Press title (Broken Realm by Jenna Greene, a Lethbridge …
This is Easter weekend; last weekend, I sang in the Easter concert of First Baptist Church here in Regina as a guest soloist and chorister. The whole concert is worth listening to, but if you’d …
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Pulp-based computing
In computers, we have software and hardware. Jokingly, the human brain is sometimes called wetware. Up next: pulpware!
OK, technically it’s hardware–wires, sensors and computer chips–embedded in paper or cardboard. A spiral of conductive ink can be a speaker, or a touch sensor. Two layers, and a page can tell when it is being bent. Among the possible creations are books that talk or light up when their pages are turned (personally, I can’t think of anything more annoying!), or boxes that can tell you how much their content weighs. (Maybe with voice messages. “Don’t even try it, buddy! I’m a hernia-in-waiting!”)
The project was outlined at the recent International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing in Innsbruck, Austria. Here’s a video of the production process and some applications. Here’s the original paper. And here’s the research project’s website.
(Via New Scientist Tech.)
(Also posted to Futurismic.)
Permanent link to this article: https://edwardwillett.com/2007/09/pulp-based-computing/
