First of all, you err in your assumptions about me. I have been working professionally in the field of blindness since 1978, as an educator and rehabilitator, and in the fields of product development/training/sales/and support since 1985. That should encourage you to inhibit tendencies toward assumptive logic and statements pertaining to others based on insufficient data regarding their perspectives... Next, prognostication is risky. Engineering systematic. The less knowledgeable one is about any area, the more prone they are to "leaps of faith" or misapprehension and the more seceptible to the yoyo of hope and deflation of that hope/or depression, when some problem not taken into account, or, minimized difficulty causes a redefinition of a problem and the necessity to rework it's apparently easy and overy hyped solution. I've been reading about replacements to Pizo-electric braille displays since 1972, and none have come to market. To hype an as yet unmanufactured, preprototype proof of concept technology is a disservice to the technologically naive and ingnorant. Similarly, to discuss problems and their solutions outside the practical capabilities of available technologies engineers can forge into a manufacturable and potentially marketable wolution is a waste of time and energy--except possibly for accademics, or engineers gathered at a bar after 5:00pm. Similarly, without a saleable business case, all the good ideas and intentions don't generate requisite venture capital to bring a device into production and distribution. This doesn't mean being dour--merely methodical. (grin) Several of the companies mentioned in the article you reference have been working toward where they are now for nearly 2 decades. Ray Kurzweil and others at Xerox invisioned a paperless office, which has never come to fruition, while other of their technological efforts have. However, they, and others rarely remember those prognostications which haven't come to fruition, rather, they crow about those which have... Nick On Fri, 12 May 2006 15:24:25 +0100 (GMT+01:00), Francesca Diodati wrote: eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=51200440 To unsubscribe at any time, just send a message to: optacon-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word "unsubscribe" (without the quotes) in the message subject. Tell your friends about the list. They can subscribe by sending a message to: optacon-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word "subscribe" (without the quotes) in the message subject.