Ever Seen a Smartbook Like Neopad?

I'm sometimes stuck between taking notes digitally or with pen and paper. It's much easier for me to get more words down when I type, but it feels more interactive to use a pen and put down words. One problem I have with that—taking notes on paper—is that it's not as assessable as digital notes.

I could be on a train, need to revisit something, but, "Darn it, it's on my notepad." And then I'd have to wait to get back before I resume. I could digitise some of my physical notes to assess later, but it's another level of productivity to instantly copy-paste your text for more, such as working with AI tools. So what if we could find a middle ground between both worlds?

I can't count how many notebooks I used all through my days at the university. Let's just say I used at least twelve 60-leaf books each semester. And there were ten semesters. It was just much easier to practice engineering math, solve electrical problems, and memorise laws across fluid dynamics and things like that. I would just write endlessly. That interaction between my mind, eyes, and hands greatly helped me study well.

What I would have really liked back then was to have everything I wrote in my notebooks instantly digitised without needing to pull up my camera or transfer them manually. How tedious it would be to transfer math notes. So I am thinking of a book—a smart book that does that for me. Does it already exist? I don't think so. But allow me to describe it a little better.

Neopad. An actual notebook—physical, but with a little extra tech juice. It would feel and look like one, but what's extra that it would do is instantly digitise your notes. Then those notes can go wherever you want them to. PC, phone, or maybe cloud storage. Wherever you stop, that's where the digital version stops.

This probably sounds like what iPads and other devices with a stylus can do, but do we really want to compare that experience with a real pen and paper? Nope.

Is that all, though? Not quite.

Sometimes, we make errors. So what happens when you cancel out a mistake? Well, the Neopad would detect that and, drumroll, just erase that part and stitch up your text in an orderly fashion. How cool is that?

There could be extra features, too. Maybe some more tech to give more insights about your writing. Say, when you most likely write, how fast you are, or maybe your level of fatigue and things like that. Or are my dreams lofty? Nah. We'll see something like that soon enough.

The best part yet, or maybe not, is that it would be completely reuseable, like Elon's space rocket. When you're done with it, you could just format it and, voila, it'll be like brand new, with no notes. And your previous notes would still exist, but in a digital format and even more accessible.

Anyway, if I could build something with technology that would make things easier and probably more exciting, then it would be the Neopad. What about you?