We want information… information… information.
Mar 05
So here’s the scene: I’m sitting in a cafe in Kuala Lumpur’s airport last summer, waiting for my flight to Bangkok, and I’m reading William Powers’ essay Hamlet’s Blackberry: Why Paper is Eternal which dives into the numerous reasons why paper continues to have a firm grip on how we experience information. Of course, I’m flipping through this 75-page PDF on my laptop. Go figure.
Fast forward to a couple of days ago, I’m scanning the CBC mobile site on my iPod Touch when this headline pops out: “Print industry to worsen before any improvements: experts.” The train of thought that Powers had started in his piece continues here: while the tangible nature of paper is what allows us to focus solely on the information presented to us, it is fast becoming a less viable medium for newspapers, whose struggles are only more exacerbated with the overall economic downturn we’re experiencing. The death knells are tolling louder.
