Why Paper Is Eternal - Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press ...

text printed on paper only exists in the fullest sense of the word if it is on the
Internet. 5
In short, paper is an increasingly subordinate medium. Like a brain-dead
patient on life support, it lives because other technologies allow it to live. The
only question, it seems, is when we will put paper out of its misery. The
practical advantages of digital technology, including lower costs, wider reach,
instant delivery and fewer environmental consequences, are inarguable. As the
Internet journalist Mickey Kaus put it last year, “<strong>Why</strong> would you continue
transmitting information on this incredibly expensive medium that kills trees?” 6
The question was rhetorical, reflecting a point of view so obviously sensible the
only appropriate response is a nod. Oh, yes, paper’s days are most certainly numbered.
Or are they? We live in an age obsessed with new technologies. The
sophisticated modern consumer knows the fine points of all the latest media
devices. Comparisons between competing technologies – PC versus Mac,
plasma versus LCD, Blackberry versus iPhone, satellite versus terrestrial radio –
are a staple of consumer culture. There are countless popular magazines
dedicated to helping us stay abreast of our media devices, and they cover every
imaginable kind of technology except the one on which the magazines
themselves are printed. <strong>Paper</strong> is the most successful communications
innovation of the last 2000 years, the one that has lasted the longest and had
the profoundest effect on civilization. One can easily make the case that
without the technology that is paper, there would be no civilization. Yet most
of the time, we don’t even think of paper as a technology. And so we don’t ask
the questions we routinely ask about other technologies: How does it work?
What are its strengths and weaknesses? <strong>Is</strong> it easy and enjoyable to use?
3