Kate Stone has advanced some futuristic technology, turning simple construction paper into turntables that actually play music.
Youth Radio and Turnstyle had the honor of hosting this inventor who wants to change the way we think about electronics. It’s awe-inspiring to watch Stone’s as-yet-unnamed creation in action: you touch your simulated turntables on a piece of paper, and you’re controlling the DJ app on the iPad sitting five feet away from you. Every function that’s available on an analog turntable, including blending songs and scratching records, is also possible with Stone’s technology.
Besides just music, this technology has promise for other fields like education, where it could help meet literacy gaps.
Say a child is learning how to read, and he doesn’t understand a particular word. He could run his fingers over a sentence printed on Stone’s paper, hooked up to speakers, and it could offer pronunciation help. Of course, there are some apps for the iPad and other tablets that can do this already. But when you think globally about needs in developing countries, this technology is much cheaper than buying iPads.