Prints are dying, Digital is taking over.
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- jetSkii0
in America we'll also still and need to use paper, but for things such as packaging consumer goods to toilet paper to wipe.
- georgesIII0
One EMT or a powerful enough solar flare,
and you'll be glad paper books still exist.- Beware 2012 is the year after next year
- Salamandojo0
You going to wipe your ass with that fucking screen?
- Sneakybadger20
Going back OP's initial post he asked if we NEEDED print, at the minute we do. Probably not in the not so distant future. There is a difference between needing a medium to enjoy something and wanting something due to sentimental value. Eg LP's and newspapers versus digital downloads and online news.
- i_monk0
How's that paperless office coming along?
- hellojeehae0
i love print. i love holding stuff in my hand and flipping through the pages. it will never die.
- HijoDMaite0
Marshall McLuhan’s theory of Media Ecology is the clearest connection to this topic. McLuhan says it best... “"The suddenness of the leap from hardware to software cannot but produce a period of anarchy and collapse, especially in the developed countries." --So yes, this is a first world problem.
In the topic of news at least, it seems that news itself does not go with paper anymore. Paper is no longer needed for news to exist. The shedding of a piece of the print era and a sure sign of the evolution in to the digital era. The speed it's happening at is where the chaos comes in. It is like very few industries we have seen in the past. Some have compared it to the conversion from artisan textiles to the industrial revolution. A family who had spent generations working and perfecting the art of making blankets and clothing were suddenly obsolete due to textile inventions of the industrial revolution. Journalists will have to learn to work in multiple media or die. Or leave the first world.Here is an interesting website about newspapers in the U.S.:
- gramme0
People have always—and will continue—to need outlets for unwinding. Reading on a computer is a tense experience, regardless of one's age. It isn't very relaxing. The iPad has semi-successfully bridged the gap between digital and print, but there's still room for the printed piece in a world gone slick. And even retina displays can't match the crisp legibility of a 175+ line screen on good paper.
I've said it here before and I'll say it again: print as a throw-away commodity will continue to wane, as it should. But print as a lower-quantity luxury will stay, I believe. The tactile object will seem particularly novel as people continue to spend more and more time in front of screens. See the proliferation of Blurb and other web-based publishing businesses.
And then I think there will always be value in printed stationery. Everyone who's serious about their work needs a nice snappy business card; and nothing in the world of correspondence is more memorable than a hand-written thank-you note, delivered of course on well-designed and well-printed stationery.