Printed electronics is now a reality, it is being used for printing RFID tag at a very low cost, for solar panels and in some special circuit building. Now researchers at the University of Chemnitz have announced a process to print a loudspeaker on paper.  Take a look:

The loudspeaker is built by overlaying several layers of print. As a support you can use normal paper, like the one of your daily newspaper. The only drawback, so far, is the need to connect the newspaper to a sound source, like an Mp3 player with a wire. But I am pretty sure that also that can be solved in the near future by embedding an antenna in the paper thus receiving the signal wirelessly (as it is done in RFID tags). What about the battery? Well, I guess one can imagine to print on the newspaper a solar panel, that should work pretty well on the beach!

Imagine listening to your newspaper, not just reading it. Hearing interviews, music…. Even the old familiar paper may become a multimedia interface and experience.

Clearly, mine are just speculation, however the reality is that technology keep progressing in two important directions: more performance and cheaper cost. And together they are changing the world.