Eink & Focus

Hi there, happy for being in the forum now.

We all know there is a bombarding growth in the consumption of information interaction gadgets, since 90's. However, there is a also a huge literature on what information overloading and regular consumption can do and have done to both our health and ecology as well. Now with every video i have ever watched in DIY perks, i have always seen there is always a concern or practice that actually minimizes. Which means a culture of making comes with the following :

• learn the market and chose/decide wisely
• provide learning time to create something functional and ergonomic
• focus and flow in the creative process lets one appreciate how much work does it require in create a useful instrument
• a sense of pride in one's own creation and creative process, and acknowledge simultaneously the knowledge acquired from wider public through internet/forums
• with more time in learning, doing, discussing, and sharing the process of doing the same and space for reproducing/versioning, etc... actually reduces e-waste to a significant amount
• striking balance between ergonomic/functional and aesthetic/invitation to use is not easy and needs a care based approach that makes the works as an art

I really feel that explosion of information in the ranging from educational contents, scientific articles, books, etc... to targeted ads, which are already proved to influence mass behavior and in many ways nudge us in paths that we have not yet understood well. In the midst of computational/informational gadgets and services all around us, we also strive to take break for them, from our work place, etc... With eink interfaces, there seems to be a promise of keeping ones reading/writing habit focused and healthy, without worrying about :

• distractions from our regular smart phones
• portability in taking more chosen content and make the time useful, even in solitary/private space - if necessary
• power draining
• losing paper notes/sketch notes or maintaining them
• read and write/note/scribble/draw without worrying about climate/light

But the irony is that the best e-ink products like Remarkable2 are not affordable, or else growing competitive markets are android based and inappropriately coupled with distractions and unnecessary components like cameras and multimedia apps... that totally undermine the specific focus/flow valued approach that eink offers because of its very nature. It also becomes cruelly painful when products are engineered to provide android tablets by just replacing their conventional screen technologies with eink displays and call it a reader/writer. As far as we know, those products just take advantage of power savings and use it for something or just advertise as longer battery life... which i personally think as manipulation.

So it would be great to have a project on making eink display that is open and works based on FOSS/H, and cover features that are very similar to Remarkable2(they use modified form of linux kernel). Even though this attempt might not be economic, i guess by doing this would create a fresh air in DIY communities to try out things. I have not done much research to breadth and depth, but there are some projects in hackaday and other DIY forums... Rpi compute board might be a good place to start... but i will let the community decide.

I am from India, working as research engineer helping around historians, archaeologists, sociologists, anthropologists, ecologists, literature, to just make their life a little easy. And year after year these scholars are constantly drifted towards technology training rather than keeping them focused and even turn them anxious towards technology in general. However, more of them are aware about the DIY, FOSS/H communities which they welcome and offer helping hand to try out.

So making such a project will be of much help to them as to lay people.