The creation of screened images can be traced back to the late 19th century with major innovations making the invention of television global in the early 20th century. Today screens are everywhere, modern society uses them every day in nearly every facet of life and range of sizes and technologies, from small touch screen phones and music players to larger monitors and televisions to gigantic inner city and stadium displays.
Communication, design, entertainment, work, education, news, purchases, screen displays are so integrated into our lifestyles that they aren’t going away, as a matter of fact, they are doing the opposite. Rather than be replaced with something better, the technology of screen display is evolving! After reading this article the screen you’re using now will seem boring.
Mirror and Window Screens
LG is stepping up the game of screen displays by fitting them into objects that we already have all around us. These beautiful displays are multifunctional, a window or mirror to the physical world or a screen to the digital world. Combining these two facets of our reality makes large displays more accessible to us in many different applications. The video below features a 55-inch screen with full HD resolution.
Glasses and Contact Lens Displays
While Google Glass has been released as a highly innovative screen display it hasn’t gripped popularity as of yet, this doesn’t mean that these types of innovations don’t have a chance to shape the future! Entering the scene is Innovega with its new iOptik prototypes, this device employs the use of contact lenses in conjunction with glasses to produce better wearable display functionality. Rather than perform as a standalone system, Innovega aims to have the iOptik connect directly to smartphones and display what is already on them, making this a very simple transition for users across the globe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF7OvoHzL8I
Flexible Displays
It seems that the next popular wave of screen displays is within our reach, companies, universities and independent research teams are experimenting with all sorts of materials to make our screens flexible! Enter the age of Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs), these surfaces do not require backlighting, as they light themselves, making them more energy efficient. With these technologies, the idea of a hardened, flat and easily breakable surface may become things of the past. One such technology, developed by Oxford University scientists, uses a phase changing material that can display extremely high-resolution pixels only 300 by 300 nanometres in size!
But the truth is, both the LG G Flex and the Samsung Galaxy Round are initial steps towards something completely different. In future, these bendy displays will be attached to similarly flexible bodies, creating whole devices that move and flex. Eventually, you’ll be able to fold your smartphone up like a piece of paper.
If you previously had no idea then you’re now in for a grand surprise, both the LG G Flex and the Samsung Galaxy Round are phones that have been released to the public that use OLED screen displays. LG is moving quickly into the world of OLED screen displays, creating brand new products (pictured right) such as an 18 inch TV which can be rolled up tightly, put away and still function just fine! Meanwhile, Samsung is working on innovating its future screens right along with the graphene revolution! They’ve recently announced a breakthrough which allows them to synthesize “large area, single crystal wafer scale graphene”. Yet not only are companies innovating for retail purposes, but Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL) is proving that there are many unique and innovative ways to create OLED screen displays.
3-Dimensional Displays
When it comes to the future of screen displays the innovations shown below truly turn science fiction into modern day reality!
Imagine passing by a machine with an interesting fog hovering over it, this fog illuminated by digital images in 3 dimensions, your hand being able to move right through this fog and allow you to touch and interact with this misty image. Your imagination willing, you’ve just pictured the MisTable, an interactive 3D display which projects images onto mist! Designed by a team at the University of Bristol, this device allows content to be shown on 2 dimensional flat mist screens or the tabletop as well as 3-dimensional images to float in real 3D projected images in the space above the tabletop.
If you would rather have a higher definition and clarity in your 3D screen display then Jinha Lee has a solution, the SpaceTop. The simplicity of SpaceTop makes displaying 3D computing highly functional, interactive and user-friendly. Using two cameras the SpaceTop watches the interaction area and the location of the users face to correctly display images to the user. The area of interaction lies just behind a clear display screen and above the keyboard, a defined cube space in midair being the location of interaction. Lee says that he’s not looking to replace normal screens but that there may be many purposes for which one may need a screen like this, furthermore, it seems that his intentions are well placed and admirable.
“It shouldn’t be in the hands of scientists, it should be in the hands of normal people,” Lee says. “It’s really important to have that eye when we think about what we want to do with this to design a beautiful world. It could be anything when the power of digital escapes the screen but it’s really our responsibility to design this together.” –Wired
