You'll be able to dog-ear your favourite pages on a device that right now looks like a flexible conference badge.
You can use it as an e-book reader, you can use it as a phone, you can use it as an MP3 player — it has all that functionality in it.
The paper computer is a 9.5-centimetre piece of flexible film that basically has the same functions as a smartphone.
The prototype called the Paperphone is still hooked up to a computer, but once it's developed as a product, all the electronics will be contained in the one sheet.
While the prototype has limitations because it didn't "make a heck of a lot of sense" to put buttons on a thin piece of film, and pressing on the film messes up the display, the lab put "bend sensors" in a layer behind the screen, which detect and interpret bends in the page.
"So you can bend the top in order to page forward or make a bookmark, you can navigate left and right on your home screen in order to open an icon, and you can make a call by squeezing the paper so that it curves, and then if you want to stop the call you pop it back into shape," he says.
The advantage is that none of these screens would use power while not in use.
"It's hard to predict, but I'd say that in about 10 years, it's possible that everybody would be using this."
