Livescribe tried to launch that 15 years ago. The Rocketbook Wave tried a very different tech too.

The reMarkable is probably close to what you're describing. People who use them love them, but I'm still a fan of real paper and ink.

I can't see this being "the next big thing". Can't you just take a picture of your document with your phone if you want a digital copy for storage?

The Fly[0] came out in 2005, but it requires special paper that told it where it was on the page. It even worked as an MP3 player! I had one; It was big and clunky, and didn't work well if you wrote fast (which I did). It was still a neat thing.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_(pentop_computer)

Is this better than taking a photograph of a page and applying OCR?

The reMarkable was supposed to replace notebooks, but I gave up on my reMarkable 2 after a month.

may i ask why you gave up on it, having considered one also?

Is this satire? I see ads for these all the time and I can't imagine this approaches a category like smart phones.

I had something called an Equil smartpen 2 that did mostly this in 2015. Now I just take notes on my iPad.

This isn't a smartphone level money maker...