I’m pretty much in agreement with the digitization of media, especially newspapers. Being a Bibliophile, reading a book on the p.c. isn’t the same experience for me. I’m saying that the two pretty much will co-exist with the digitization increasing but the paper will remain.

The URL is up. I think you typed 4 zeros into it.

Your link to your site doesn’t work. Is it wwww.derivativere.com? I get a 400 error…

For on demand printing to get big we will have to wait for the older generations to “fade away” for a lack of a nicer way of putting it. Our generation and younger ones dont mind convience for loss of a more social enviroment.

Also sorry for the block of text. I did this all on my iPod.

I don’t think paper will ever die out, maybe it won’t be used as much, but cinema didn’t die when video came out. People still go to the cinema because it’s the experience of going to the cinema that they enjoy.

The only way for digital books to challenge paper books is to bring in gestures for turning the page (a little bit like this link: http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/02/student_designer_envisions_a_m.html).

Perhaps fiction in the future won’t necessarily take place in a book alone either, http://www.cathysbook.com/ is good example of this. You can read the book, but there are also clues on the web and you can call phone lines to hear more about the story.

I thought the recent Penguin story using googlemaps was also pretty inventive way to tell a story. (http://www.wetellstories.co.uk/stories/week1/)

Print publishers are going through the same knee jerk reactions that the music industry went through. They are obsessed with creating digital copies of their magazines in the form of page turners or locking away ebooks with draconian DRM. Neither of these approaches understand the way that people use the web for their information and data requirements.

On the web readers want information to be easy to find, easy to read, and relevant. If they have to pay for it then they want that process to be simple and easy as well. Hardly any publishers have grasped this and are going to suffer the same fate of the record companies.

One area which print is still relevant is fiction. As someone already mentioned who wants to take their laptop to the beach. ePaper is clearly a solution for this. The major revolution however, will be in the hands of the authors. Thanks to print on demand sites like http://www.LuLu.com authors can bypass the old dinosaur publishers and reach their audience directly. Just like bands have done with MySpace.

At the end of the day the argument isn’t about paper vs digital, its about those who get it and those who don’t. Those that don’t are already getting left behind.

@Paul
you raise, once more, some very interesting points. Paper portability and low cost are also couple of its great advantages. I would never risk getting the smallest grain of sand in my laptop.

@Bill
I totally agree. I wonder though, if future generations, which will live with less newspapers, will find it similarly satisfactory holding paper and not a laptop.

Maybe we are just used to paper and in the future, people will surpass that need. Digital costs will be that low to take your computer to the beach and reading from it won’t be such a big deal.
People could once argue, that sending letters with the post was a romantic, genuine gesture, that just feels more right than sending SMS. Still this communication is slowly lost and we constantly get accustomed to others.

On your side note, Bill, I can see a “Submit Comment” under the comment box in three of my browsers… I checked the code and it seems nice. Thanks for the notification, I’ll take a deeper look at it.

On a side note you need a comment button at the bottom of your entries.

Your reasoning behind print’s future existence is a unique way to look at it. I just wonder if future digital generations will have the abilities to appreciate communication that’s not multi-media, such that they can visualize in their heads an abstract thought or image that isn’t glowing on the screen in front of them. I believe (and this is a hypothesis) the ability to calculate anything more than rudimentary sums in ones head has failed to survive even 30 years of pocket calculators across most modern societies. Just try watching someone make change without use of a printout or LED screen.

I’d also add the more mundane fact that print has a portability and durability that digital can’t yet match. This may change, but no one is probably thinking that taking a Kindle to the beach for some summer reading is a very good idea yet.

One concern that I have about E-Paper is that you still only see one page at a time, then you have to keep flipping back and forth. This relates to my point #2 about the difficulties in editing online. The same holds true for reading a large document, I think.