HP’s Building Flexible Displays For Soldiers’ Wrists And Ever-Changing Price Tags

Some mad flexi-OLED prototypes have been shown off by other companies before, but HP’s getting in on the act with screens that could be used for a multitude of purposes, and hopefully as soon as 2013.

The durable screens would work in both low-light and direct sunlight, with HP’s head of Information Surfaces Lab, Carl Taussig, saying they “want to mix screens to be somewhere between a reflective surface, which is like a piece of paper, and for it to be transmissive, much like the screen on an iPhone.” I’m still waiting for the day that cardboard boxes of cereal talk to us, and chocolate bar wrappers advertise how scrumptious they are, but HP envisions a future with a more important role.

“The Army has been asking for flexible displays so soldiers can wear screens that wrap around their wrist and can transmit information about an enemy in real-time,” said Taussig, who also described of “prices or discounts on products that change in real-time, rather than employees having to change paper price tags.”

The latter in particular could have scary consequences when paired with other technology – image a price tag that suddenly leaps in price depending on how valuable the customer is to the shop, making for some unfortunate Pretty Woman-style discrimination. [NYT]