#986: UnScreen

If you can build a camera with an integrated projector, then the next step has to be a laptop version.

Today’s invention is a laptop without a conventional (heavy, fragile, costly) screen.

This would project onto any close-range, near-vertical surface and thus also do away with the issue of the screen acting as a divider between people -allowing them to view everything as a side-by-side show.

This would also project the cursor of course (enabling click location to be registered in the usual way).

Amazingly, this doesn’t seem to have been patented yet (although it’s probably just stuck somewhere in the broken works of the IP system). If you wanted to go the whole hog, the keyboard unit could also be replaced by a projected, virtual one, emitted from the same projector as the screen content.

This would obviously be inadequate for lecture-scale presentations, but the power required for screen-sized illumination on a nearby wall or partition would be just about feasible.