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

<strong>Paper</strong> doesn’t seem to require much consideration because it’s so simple:
a thin, flexible material that reflects light, crisply displaying any marks you make
on it. What more is there to say? It has no circuits or chips, no ports, touchpad,
speakers or screen. It doesn’t link to any networks or “sync” with other
devices. It won’t download files, burn CDs or play movies. It just sits there,
mute and passive, like a dog that knows one trick, waiting to perform it again.
Yet dog tricks are deceptive. A dog fetching a ball doesn’t appear to be
doing anything special. But how many other creatures can do this? A cat won’t
fetch, nor will a rabbit or a fish. It’s hard to get some highly intelligent children
to fetch on command. A dog fetches for complex reasons that are invisible to
the observer of the act, factors rooted in the relationship between dogs and
people that has been formed over centuries of co-existence, breeding, training
and daily interaction.
Though paper appears to be a relatively “dumb” medium, it too
performs tasks that require special abilities. And many of paper’s tricks, the
useful purposes it serves, are similarly products of its long relationship with
people. There are cognitive, cultural and social dimensions to the human-paper
dynamic that come into play every time any kind of paper, from a tiny Post-it
note to a groaning Sunday newspaper, is used to convey, retrieve or store
information. <strong>Paper</strong> does these jobs in a way that pleases us, which is why, for
centuries, we have liked having it around. It’s also why we will never give it up
as a medium, not completely. For some of the roles paper currently fulfills in
our media lives, there is no better alternative currently available. And the most
promising candidates are technologies that are striving to be more, not less, like
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