It Is Time To Get Past The Paradigm of Printing

I grew up reading books so I will still have a few around me but.. well I walked into the library of the RACV Club in Melbourne not long ago and it was stocked with every newspaper and magazine imaginable.. yet all I could think was all of this ‘news’ is at least a day old. I pulled out my iPhone and opened Twitter and my RSS Reader for some up to the minute coverage instead. 

I gave up printing before I gave up newspapers – the last time I printed something was an assignment at RMIT University because they wouldn’t accept a digital version alone. That aside it has been years. 

What is the most effective way to reduce the number of trees we cut down each year? Better alternatives. My phone has access to the latest information on the web, and it is easier to submit an assignment online than print it out and travel to Uni to hand it in.

forrest It Is Time To Get Past The Paradigm of Printing

We don’t need to use paper this much – pair my iPhone with my Surface/TV and I’ll be satisfied. 

We should only need one generation to largely remove our habit of sharing information on dead forrests.

By Ross Hill - January 20th, 2009 at 9:54am with 1,042 views -

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  • Zac I think books will be around for a long time. They are useful because they don't really go out of date, unlike things like newspapers. I think there will be less books because a lot of information that we used to go to books for is more accessible and quicker to access through Google.
  • Doesn't leave book publishers in a very good position does it?
  • The paperless office is a thought, which comes to mind, a Co in Europe was interviewed at some stage, how did they do it was the big question... simple said the CEO don't buy a printer or a copier, and avoid having any easy way to connect one up. scan things that come in the mail (as mentioned) and get people to read things on the screen (E paper will make that easier to do...)
  • Andre I'm not saying it will happen overnight - but I think when our generation grows old there won't be much timely information left on paper. A menu is something that doesn't change often so you get a lot of usage when it is on paper, but a newspaper is old news by the time it is printed and nobody goes around reading them when they are a week old - they are simply thrown out. I think the use of paper for timely news will decrease more quickly.
  • Sure, the print industry is greatly suffering. But, honesty... how realistic is it to kill the print dinosaur. It truly may be a dinosaur, but this beast has taken deep roots.

    The publication industry may be the first to ditch the paper, and I am confident the reality of going all digital is on the plate of every publication leader.

    But what about all other print communication?
    Can we drive down the freeway and location-specific advertising is fed to us via our iphones, blackberrys and radios instead of seeing the billboard?
    Can we walk down the street and nearby restaurants wifi their menus and promos to our phones instead of mailing us the menu?

    Although the above scenarios are realistic; I'm not sure we're quite ready to let go of the print.
  • I digitally scan all my files via a $99 document scanner I bought from Harvey Norman, and store it on my pc, then recycle all those files, works great, easy to manage, and good for the environment :)
  • Yeah good point Aaron - the infrastructure maybe isn't there for formats like panorama, I reckon they would look great on a big plasma on the wall or something. It will be interesting to see how things like the Microsoft Surface take off, and ePaper. I read rss on my iPhone and that is pretty cool but I would never read a book in that format yet. Does anyone know how readable the Kindle is?
  • I rediscovered http://issuu.com last week and did up a quick demo of an online panorama photography book on the weekend http://link.panedia.com/book1

    I've been thinking about a real book for a while now, but I am loving the online version. It makes little sense to show a panoramic image spread over 2 fake pages on a computer monitor.. and yet, I really like the online book format being self contained with turning turning pages. Something about physical books must be very ingrained.

    Anyway, just reporting that I'd love to have all my books/magazines in this format for viewing :)
  • Oh so true Ross!

    It is such an easy thing to do and yet the adoption of digital news and document sharing is only just starting to increase now...

    Imagine what it would mean for the environment (and business costs!!) if we could get greater than 80% of people using digital alternatives 80% of the time.

    You're right, we can do this in one generation and I think you'll find it's ours.
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