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.”
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?
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I almost always print out online articles to read. I like to highlight text and annotate with my own notes as a sort of dialog with the author. I can then go back to an article and see what I was thinking when I read it.
Until browsers are able to facilitate annotation that can be saved, I’ll be still be hitting the print button.
July 24th, 2007 at 9:41 am
I almost always print out online articles to read. I like to highlight text and annotate with my own notes as a sort of dialog with the author. I can then go back later to an article and see what I was thinking when I read it.
Until browsers are able to facilitate annotation, and are able to save those annotations and comments, I’ll be be hitting the Print button.
July 24th, 2007 at 9:42 am
ooo, good insight into the future > if Google gets ahold of this post (why do I credit them with so much) they’ll be figuring out how to leave personalize annotations and comments. Seriously, I’d be on the look out for some innovation regarding this ability AND/OR some agency might see this as an opportunity for a client…
July 24th, 2007 at 10:19 am
Hi guys
Why not transfer your article into a pdf document, and then anote it as you want & save it.
That’s what I’m doing.
Sorry for my English, I’m writing from France
M
July 25th, 2007 at 1:41 am
Hi guys
Why not transfer your article into a pdf document, and then anote it as you want & save it.
That’s what I’m doing.
Sorry for my English, I’m writing from France
July 25th, 2007 at 1:41 am
Hi guys
Why not transfer your article into a pdf. document, and then anote it as you want & save it.
That’s what I’m doing everyday.
Sorry for my English, I’m writing from France
July 25th, 2007 at 1:43 am
Me too, me too. Until there’s a digital way to highlight any content, save it in a folder, annotate it, and “clip” it together with other pieces within the same folder, I have to do the paper thing.
A related topic: What do you store on your hard drive v in your e-mail? With unlimited free storage (cf. Yahoo E-mail), I’m now using their server space as backup and for secondarily important docs. The X-Drive model of offsite storage never really worked (AOL & Yahoo had this service) but I wonder whether it’s due for a renaissance?
July 25th, 2007 at 5:14 am
Great comments and questions.
John > If you haven’t seen “Die Hard or Live Free” let me spare you $11 and ask you the question it made me consider: what if the digital realm went back to ground zero? Yeah yeah, all Y2K too early in the morning, but…something to consider.
But then really, this is never going to happen because the digitalsphere is 100% awesome and working and if it’s not working then there’s a million +1 people working on it, and they’re all smart people, so what am I worried about?
more to come…
July 25th, 2007 at 7:31 am