Emerging Technologies

There are some current technologies under development that offer exciting possibilities for future advertising. In this paper, I will describe two of these technologies.

Electonic Ink    Electronic ink is a new technology developed that will eventually allow any suface to become a display. It works by pulling light and dark particles to the surface of the medium according to the electronically charged signals that it receives. Scientists hope that one day digital books can be created that will typeset themselves so that users can read them like normal books. Electronic ink has several benefits: low power usage, flexibility, and readability (HowStuffWorks.com, 2004).

Wireless Paper Recently, a Japanese paper company called Oji Paper announced a new technology that embeds semiconductor chips into paper. The chip-embedded paper is a little thicker than a normal sheet of paper, but the chip includes an intenna that can trasmit at frequences of 13.56 megahertz to 2.45gigahertz. The company's goal is to places these chips in different paper products, such as checks and gift certificates. However, the implications for marketing is huge--a piece of electronic paper that can transmit information can have many different uses (PhysOrg, 2004).