Re: "Printing" a $15 Computer

From: Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Date: Sat Jan 20 2001 - 07:39:44 MST


Anders Sandberg wrote:

> There was a nature review a while ago about plastic electronics
> too. Flexible plastic based electronics is definitely being developed
> by several companies, it is going to be interesting to see what niches
> it will fit into.

Wireless digital labels, large cheap displays (true digital paper),
polymer photovoltaics. Prototyping. Lots of it.
 
> My prediction "a website in every cola can" is getting more likely
> every day :-)

The chiefest part: a polymer/printable circuit fab is going to be
a comparatively small, cheap thing. Nothing at all like a 300 mm wafer
fab. The structures are big, slow, and don't age gracefully, but
imagine what it means for prototyping. The threshold is greatly
decreased. Individual variation of circuitry is very possible.
Political control at hardware level becomes a lot more difficult.
Threshold to molecular circuitry gets decreased.



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