Prints are dying, Digital is taking over.
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- Amicus0
Quality printed books and magazines will have a place for a long time yet. I've noticed that quite a few mags are using more spot colours, specialty finishes and better stocks than they did 5 years ago. The quality of new magazines in terms of print, creative and editorial seems to be better as well.
Time sensitive news is much better suited to the digital medium and when larger screens reach that 300dpi level we will truly start to see the death of the daily paper, but I feel it will take 10–15 years for the transition to kill most papers off.
- A lot of print, like everything else is shipped to the far east to print 'cos it's far cheaper and the quality can be better...robulation
- Only problem is...they have completely different ways of doing things e.g. a cutter marked with magentarobulation
- doesn't mean shit...and will probably get printed unless you speak to them beforehandrobulation
- All this has nothing to do with the argument in general. Of course things will be printed somewhere cheaply.Amicus
- tesmith0
Yes, I own a printing company.
- i_monk0
How's that paperless office coming along?
- detritus0
What we 'need' is information.
What form that takes will be subject to lots of pointless, zealous bickering back and forth both ways for years to come.
Personally, I want a couple of screens and a digital hub. I do most of my media consumption via a computer these days anyway.
It's like music—I used to treasure my CD collection, now I rue it. I have ten or twenty times the amount of music in a 2.5" form factor than I did in two 6 foot hight towers of unrecyclable polycarbonate/aluminium disc sandwiches.
I've thrown out, quite literally, about a third of a tonne of periodicals over the last 4 years, and I still have book cases filled with paper mass which I'll only intermittently refer to.
Why? Why do I waste so much space with this shit?
It's the information that's important.
For me, anyway.
- Actually, I think I worked out it was a quarter tonne of periodicals. No need to exaggerate, eh?detritus
- Are you saying you use wikipedia, and not dusting off the 4th edited revision of the 5th encyclopedia book (E to F)?Peter
- I actually had a digital subscription to Enc.Brit for a couple of years. Total waste of time and money).detritus
- I hae the full set of Children's Britannica when I was a kid too. Exciting little chap that I was..detritus
- lukus_W0
I still use a fountain pen. I reckon old methods of interacting will always hold a certain charm. Need doesn't necessitate desire.
- hellojeehae0
i love print. i love holding stuff in my hand and flipping through the pages. it will never die.
- bjladams0
my kids choose reading a book with me on the couch over watching tv
- detritus0
re: 'books and papers require no power to use'.
As already pointed out by PeterH, you're not considering (nor are you claiming to, don't get me wrong) the energy expenditure in the creation of that media.
I started my career at a newspaper and was quite shocked by the daily energy use and material wastage on a medium whose primary purpose was to act as an advertising vehicle (content is secondary, apparently).
A recent cost/benefit analysis by (I think) NewsCorp showed that over a 12-18 month lifecycle, the costs (ie. the energy) employed to provide a subscriber with a Kindle was less than that to supply them a newspaper each day.
Now, appreciate how little energy these things use (they need only expend energy when changing the display or accessing data) and you can envisage a not-far-off product that self-charges with built in motion or remote-powered or whatever.
So, you have a handheld electronic library (not just a book) that is interactive, potentially networked and is 'self-powering'.
What then?
- TenaciousG0
Both are useful, for different reasons. Paper lasts quite a long time if cared for, needs no power, and will never suffer file formatting errors. We can still read old Guttenberg Bibles today. By contrast, try finding a computer that will open a file from pre 1995 software. You have any Quark or Word Perfect 1.0 files? The problem is particularly bad in the sciences, when lab analysis software gets updated.
On the other hand, a Kindle full of books is much easier to carry around.
- That's more of an administrative problem. Digital files, cared for, will still be perfect in millions of years.ribit
- detritus0
There's obviously a distinction between overall consumption habits and the particular tactile delights we like to engage in, primally.
I'd be surprised if, in Twenty thousand years, some far off AI-plasma hybrid descendent of mine doesn't still engage in a bit of finger painting.
But there's a difference between the occasional sopt sensory consumption and involvement with media (painting, modelling, drawing, etc) than 'reading a medium'.
Not many of us have actually written a book, have we?
- I've written research papers. Does that count?TenaciousG
- Sure! But you don't write them every day, do you? It's an occasional use, not a daily requirement.detritus
- i've only had 2 books go to print - but i work on book publications often.bjladams
- Peter0
Until great resolution, and battery issues are dealt with, I'd like the next best thing to a digital sketchbook soon: an ipad that supports flash, illustrator, and vector. With enough pressure points (that are also responsive to the angle of my pen) and processing power to follow my exact doodling.
Of a stickman with a giant penis.
- antonyjwhite0
Print isn't dead, it may be however on the decline due to digital devices such as Ipads and electronic ad shelters etc.
However, if i drop a newspaper what happens? And if i drop an Ipad, what happens?- Clumsiness dictates future use? So...you work on mainly paper? Seeing that you may or may not drop that computer. ;)Peter
- detritus0
The problem with this cyclical topic is that everyone appears to assume the technology now is how it ever will be thus.
'What happens when you drop it'? If you drop an iPad, quite a lot. A kindle, I imagine less so. Tomorrow - a flexible screen made out of rubberised material? Nothing—in fact—it says on the instructions you *should* drop it, a couple of times a day, just to charge it...
- 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.:
- bjladams0
i treat print with more respect than digital media... not that i'm racist against digital, i just feel that print demands from me- like i've trained myself to believe printed text more than digital... probably thanks to widipedia.
plus i've never been bombarded with eplepsy-causing viagra ads when shopping for a book, not yet anyway.
- great marketing idea - the Viagra pop-up book...TenaciousG
- i_monk0
When was the last time you felt the need to back up your books? Probably never. Because, short of a house fire, there won't be a problem 'accessing' them years from now.
Until digital storage media are as reliable as paper, print is necessary.
- eating_tv0
I love the look and feel of books. But I hate moving them (if I move house) and I hardly ever read a book twice... if ever. I'm thinking of donating most of my books to some place or someone.