Stay informed about current events and local news with this incredible printing tip that resurrects the printed newspaper, with a twist: the paper is replaced by your own skin. Fortunately for you, no printing press is involved.

The issue:

Using your phone to read the news has three major downsides:

  1. You have to hold your phone. You could easily drop it!
  2. It uses battery life, which might be in short supply depending on how often you can charge your phone.
  3. A barrage of linked “clickbait” articles (with interesting photos) attempt to lure you away from reading any serious journalism.

Proposal:

Here, we propose to re-introduce newspaper kiosks, but with a twist: instead of providing a newspaper, the kiosk simply prints the day’s news onto your arm, as mocked up in Figure 1.

Then, you can easily read it at your leisure, without being distracted by phone messages, annoying ads, and low-battery indicators.

 

1-kiosk.png
Fig. 1: Just put your arm on the surface above, and the printing apparatus will write the day’s news on it in less than 15 seconds. Convenient! Since the system is entirely automated, enough money is saved on wages to afford a full-time 1930s-era newsboy to stand next to it and shout “Extra, Extra!”

The result of this printing apparatus is shown in Figure 2.

 

2-arm-single-color.png
Fig. 2: News of the day, as written on one (or both) arms.

 

The mockup looks quite successful so far, but there is a caveat that will restrict its market size, shown in figure 3.

3b-arms-shaded.jpg
Fig. 3: Variations in skin tone pose a challenge to the printing mechanism. Most inks can only darken the material they print on, which works for skin tones A and B, but results in unreadable text on dark skin tone C. A similar phenomenon is also observed in face-detection algorithms.

Fortunately, there is practical enhancement that will improve the experience for everyone (Figure 4).

3c-fluorescent-ink.jpg
Fig. 4: Luminous ink (non-radioactive) is the solution: not only does this work well for both light and dark skin, but it also lets you read the news in the dark, as shown above. In fact, there’s no way to turn it off, so you can’t even avoid reading the news when it is dark out. Not that you’d want to anyway, of course!

Conclusion:

Perhaps this would be a way to resurrect print journalism.

PROS: Provides great way to stay up-to-date on current events without being distracted by ads and clickbait articles. This will lead to an informed electorate and strong democracy.

CONS: Of limited utility in ares where short-sleeved shirts are not worn. Ideal test market would be a tropical location with a casual dress code.