top. Today, CRTs are on the way out-models with CRTs are heavily dis- counted, and the technology appears to have reached the end of the road. Color LCD displays are cheap and abundant, and plasma displays are becom- ing increasingly popular for big-screen applications. In addition, researchers PAPER-LIKE VIDEO DISPLAYS are working on a new wave of output devices that promise to give users better and brighter images in significantly less space. 9.8 A NEW VIEW Tiny screens may actually be okay on mobile devices, as long as the screen can be placed close to the user's eye. "I only have a little screen, and how much bandwidth do I need to put all these pictures on a tiny screen?" asks Wim Sweldens, vice president of computing science research at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey. The answer, he says, is to wear the display. "You take that tiny little screen and put it right next to your eye-it looks like a really big screen." That would mean a display that's integrated into glasses or perhaps even into contact lenses. "You can put a lot of data on there at very high resolution," Sweldens. Many people, however, will balk at the idea of wearing displays, no matter how convenient the technology may be. That's why much display research is focusing on developing improved conventional-sized screen technologies. 9.9 PAPER-LIKE VIDEO DISPLAYS Researchers at the University of Rochester and elsewhere are racing to develop a technology that would not only make flexible, paper-like video dis- plays a reality but could make them in full color. Companies around the world are working on doing away with bulky com- puter monitors and laptop displays. Marrying the versatility of a video screen with the convenience and familiarity of paper could yield a TV that you could fold into your pocket, a computer you could write on like an ordinary piece of paper, or a newspaper that can update itself. The technology being devel- oped at the University of Rochester is based on polymer cholesteric liquid crystal (pCLC) particles, also known 