Hello my digital followers...
Have you all heard that ink/pencil to paper is an outmoded means of communication? I mean look at where I'm entering this information... this used to be the equivalent of the personal diary. Now I type away and if popular my personal feelings regarding any subject can be shared with millions. I read an article in Fortune magazine recently that declared the future of reading is in the digital form. It extolled the virtues of digital media and its ability to be portable, shareable and easily accessible, but how do you sell it? Not just from a journalistic subscription standpoint - I mean can you imagine people paying $0.25 for access to the Washington Post for 2-3 hours? Ok, let's move beyond that aspect and get back to the comfort people have with the tangible qualities of pen to paper. Would you feel comfortable having all legal documents signed via a digital PKI certificate... I think there's a certain uneasiness with this thought, but people are becoming comfortable with wireless banking transactions - avoiding paper money entirely, so why not get rid of all forms of the written word and save some trees right? Certain banks have already begun to scan all paper checks deposited and then retain the digital copies which they send to customer via email (PDF.. got to love it). The funny part is that the entire burgeoning growth of free digital media and digital content was being pushed forward on the wings of promotional marketing (on-line ads). Well the interesting thing is that marketing research has shown that printed ads actually results in greater revenue because it sticks with readers longer - the blitz of media sponsored digital content has overwhelmed readers and become background clutter, white noise so to speak. People like the flexibility/portability of digital media but they trust paper and ink. Is this some innate personal connection from childhood or does this rest with some type of intrinsic human need to believe in what we can feel, touch and interact with - including information.
According to the Fortune article this doesn't necessarily mean that people don't want to read or access information online, but they just don't want lots of it (long-form journalism is considered impossible for some writers), readers seem to prefer short summarized articles and even in the business circles financial investors worry that financial media journals like The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times will fall apart and the critical and in-depth pieces of journalism that allow investors to draw conclusions about the information may disappear to be replaced by the Equivalent of financial Tweets. I mean can you imagine the end result: "Like I heard a wicked rumor that J&J will not meet financial earnings..LOL" follow me on Flitter for more info in 200 characters or less... The article suggests that the savior for news and information could actually be... well a digital one. The digital readers which spend a considerable amount of time attempting to resemble paper in its original form ... a simple direct approach that allows you to do something that yes ... could possibly be free if you find your article online or your book at a peer-to-peer site, but is it convenient and direct. No. People are lazy and if you offer them a cheaper, at least from a time perspective, way to receive their information they will pay for it. Something that may be challenging to receive free (think of all the registrations you have to go through to read an article.. the ads that interrupt your reading or the inability to trust the excerpts from a third-party provider). Still there are those who love the feel of a page of paper and revel in the gloss of a photo spread, but can't this too be replicated to some extent digitally?
In business it's already become a thing of the past for someone to write down notes or send inter-office memos and even the bulletin boards in the break room have been replaced with dynamically updated information on HD TV monitors (at least where I work). Oddly enough the only group not comfortable with the thought of replacing the written word are those involved with contracts and other legal issues in business. The thought that making your X could be done with a trusted key seems to really unnerve folks (well at least my Dad who thinks that cybercriminals are specifically targeting his personal stash of can't fail investment strategies and Grandmas ultimate brownie recipe). Security seems to be the final hurdle that needs to be overcome prior to regulatory and legal approval of digital forms of contracts and other legal documents because truth be told the cost benefit analysis has been done and the cost-savings of eliminating stack and stacks of paper is there in some would say "black and white".
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I think there are a few things that digital text will have a hard time replacing cheaply... note-taking, for one. You may be able to type up notes for a History class or a Law class, but what about a Science class or Econ class where there are complicated formulas and diagrams to draw?
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, although a lot of art does take place on the computer screen using a tablet, I know plenty of artists who first prefer to sketch out the outlines on paper, then scan the paper in to start tracing and filling it in.
As for newspapers and financial magazines, I think these are ultimately going to be replaced with blogs, not Twitter feeds. People still have an appetite for large amounts of information, but they want the flexibility that blogs and blog readers offer them. I've realized recently that Google Reader for me is what the newspaper was for my parents... I get the widely varied information, but the advantage of Google Reader is that I can tailor it to only be on the topics I'm interested in.