July 24, 2007

Can Paper Survive?

first image In a digital age, paper is losing its weight. WMMNA recently asked: How do we survive the paper industry? This discussed kicked off the “Paper & Pixel,” a week of discussions surrounding the development of technology and how it’s influencing the publishing industry.

Ask yourself: what was the last document you printed and why? Now compare it to how many things you’ve read online - emails, blogs, articles, news headlines, the thesaurus, etc. Why do people need to print anymore? Or better yet, where does the information have more significance: online or offline?

This is a question tackled by Helmet Smits, a multidisciplinary visual artist from The Netherlands. His latest exhibit Pamphlet follows the life of a digital document through the printing system to the real world. Smits says”traditional product parameters have been disrupted.”

second image The exhibit seems to most exemplify the increasing need to bridge the online world with the offline world, a structure still being built but that many bloggers are working to define. In a digital world, can we expect e-paper to be printable?