Watching a friend draw something on paper today, I was thinking about the big advantage that paper has over electronic media in terms of expressivity, fluidity, subtlety, resolution and sheer sensuous feedback.
Electronic drawing has, of course, only one advantage – perfect undoability. So drawable ePaper doesn’t need to be as good as paper itself to take over, it just needs to be almost as good, to the point where the ability to back up from one’s mistakes makes up the rest of the difference.
Perhaps, sometime further out into the future, with the advent of new technologies of which we cannot currently conceive, other media will achieve a kind of undoability that will change the nature of various other human activities and transactions.
For example, perhaps one day we will achieve eConversation. Remember that foolish thing you said that one time at that party, a moment of stupidity you’ve been spending years regretting? Well, no problem. With eConversation you’ll just be able to hit the UNDO button, and it will never even have happened.
Then of course, with any luck we will go on to invent eWar…
😉