Thin is in, as Sony debuts flexible video display

Japan has long led the world in the field of display technologies -- just think of all those jumbotron TVs that wowed the world in the 1980s and 1990s. Now Sony has upped the ante yet again with a screen on the opposite side of the size spectrum: so thin and flexible that it can be rolled up like a sheet of paper and flattened again repeatedly, displaying crisp moving images all the while. The 432 by 240 pixel resolution is similar to that of many cell phone displays.

Still in the prototype phase, the OLED (organic light-emitting diode) screen will undoubtedly debut on portable electronic devices such as cell phones and netbook computers. There aren't any immediate plans for commercialization at this stage, but one has to wonder how long it'll be before tech-crazed fashionistas in Harajuku start fashioning the things into wearable articles of digital clothing.