The “newspaper” is just an institution, an abstract entity that gathers and distributes the core product, which is news and other information. The paper it’s printed on is simply a container for that information, a technology of convenience. If we replace the old container with a new one, nothing will be lost, as long as the contents are the same. Whether milk is delivered in a plastic bottle or a waxed cardboard carton, it’s still milk.
A striking article from a Harvard professor: “Hamlet’s Blackberry: Why Paper is Eternal” by William Powers. It’s 75 pages long and beautifully written, but in case you’re too busy skimming other electronic writing, here’s a quick summary:
He references Garrison Keillor’s guide to reading a newspaper, Paul Duguid’s assessment of supersession, Mark Patinkin’s “I’ll Miss Having a Newspaper in my Hands” (he still does), Scott Donaton’s column upon our sentimentality toward the printed word, Dan Okrent’s lecture “The Death of Print,” Paul Saffo’s “The Electronic Pi??ata,” a 1975 article in Business World about the paperless “Office of the Future,” and so on.
Paper, Powers declares, was “the iPod of its day”; he traces it from Cai Lun, a Chinese official credited with paper’s invention in 105 A.D., to the Missal of Silos to Egyptian thank you letters (which were said to close with the phrase “Pardon the papyrus” – an apology for using outdated technology) to Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II’s outlaw of paper to Gutenberg’s press.
My favorite trend in paper advancements is the “writing table,” a pocket-sized pad of coated paper (usually about ten sheets) that was reusable and easy to clean. Popular in the sixteenth century, one would write upon it with a stylus and wipe it off with a sponge. This remained popular for ages; Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin each had their own ivory version. Not exactly a Blackberry Pearl, but our addiction to hand-held, convenient writing devices is not a new phenomena. I as a modern reader find it oddly comforting to know we technology addicts are in good company.
This is referenced in Act One of Hamlet, when Hamlet meets his father’s ghost. Though it’s debatable whether Hamlet is meant to be carrying his “table” in his hand and writing or speaking metaphorically, it’s clear that the “table of memory” he wipes clean is meant to be this convenient little writing gizmo.
Using Hamlet as a template for his discussion of the written word in the future, Powers states that: 1) We now write things by hand when we want a “pure” communication with as little as possible between us and the recipients of our notes; 2) The role of paper in our lives is changing – we create and store things electronically, print them for temporary use, and then dispose of them when we’re finished (read: Mapquest). It is not that paper will be entirely replaced, Powers argues; the radio was not replaced by television, but it became less a central fixture in the modern household and more an entertainment system for the car.
Though paper’s work has been shifting away from storage and toward communication, for some reason we seldom think or talk about what exactly happens when paper communicates. This is because media communication appears to be a form of transportation: Like UPS trucks, information technologies simply move product from one place to another. However, there is one important way in which they are not like trucks at all. After information arrives at its destination, something else has to happen for the communication to be complete: The individual must interact with the medium, using his or her senses and cognitive abilities to understand the content. In the case of paper, this is the moment when we pick up a sheet, or dozens of sheets joined together to form a newspaper, magazine or book, and begin reading. If we could get to the bottom of that moment ??? which we take for granted, though it’s a profound, almost magical event ??? we might be able to say why paper has endured this far into the age of electronic media, and whether it will continue to figure in our lives.
For Hamlet, the act of writing after speaking with his father’s ghost serves as a means of interacting with this new information, and, according to Powers, making it “real.” Indeed we look to writing to center ourselves, to gather our thoughts in the midst of chaos. Comparing this to checking one’s messages in a crowded airport, Powers jokes, “Let’s see, any new messages? is a mundane analogue of ‘My tables, My Tables.'”
In the last decade or so, a handful of researchers have looked at what happens when people interact with paper, and in some cases compared that dynamic to human interactions with other media. Their findings suggest that paper has intrinsic properties that (1) make it easy and enjoyable to work with, (2) help us make sense of information, and (3) are conducive to certain kinds of reading and thinking. They are properties that the newer media, for all their wonders, have not yet learned to match. …As it happens, many of paper’s affordances are rooted in its limitations ??? its physicality, the fact that it can only be in one place, etc. In other words, its weaknesses are also its strengths.
I can supply another example outside of this text: In Milton’s final book of Paradise Lost, in the process of explaining how The Son would bring faith to humans, Milton says He “upon their hearts shall write / To guide them in all truth” (XII, 489-490). Here writing serves as a sublime instruction, but is solidified within human understanding because it has been expressed in (physical) words. It is a metaphor, but not a metaphor for digital writing; we the reader may understand the personal touch of The Messiah on every individual, as though God has handwriting. He’s not just printing out some words of advice in the computer lab and passing them out at a meeting.
In a study with IMF employees, authors Sellen and Harper found that people like having paper on their desks; it’s easy to pass around and assembling it, even into piles of clutter, made the employees feel as though things were in order. They liked the contextual clues that brought their ideas from the abstract to the concrete.
It’s tangibility, spatial flexibility, tailorability, and manipulability that people like best about paper. It’s easy to set aside one task on paper and focus upon another. It’s easier on the eyes than a computer screen. A paper document has a level of stability and implicit selectiveness to it (how else would the document have made it into print?). It is less overwhelming than, say, a Google search. Additionally, magazine ads were praised by readers (as opposed to television ads, which were described as disruptive and hard to tune out) mainly because the reader feels she has more control over which ads she views on paper.
Powers moves on to talk about Scott MacDonald of Cond?? Nast’s research of the “merciful oblivion” of “flow” – when one is so absorbed in an activity, other stimuli fall away. Screen reading is “search and destroy,” he says; one scans an online page for information, and feels the need to hurry.
Precisely by being finite, it imposes order on the vastness of the information universe. Anything printed on paper is a selection, a standalone packet of ideas pulled out of the macrocosm ??? not just information but implicitly someone’s idea of knowledge. In a relentlessly networked world, the fact that a physical library cannot contain everything becomes an advantage.
…One of the chapters of Flow is entitled “Cheating Chaos,” the author’s shorthand for what happens when one learns to control the content of “inner experience.” In various ways, this is exactly what paper helps us do, now more than ever. It becomes a still point, an anchor for the consciousness. It’s a trick the digital medium hasn’t mastered ??? not yet.
Newspapers temper raw information with a human understanding of the data. Powers says the internet is an ideal space for news media: publishing is instantaneous, the writing is easy to modify, and one may link to similar articles or even videos and interviews for the reader to obtain context and comprehension.
The difference between print and digital media according to Powers is our use of each. Print is inherently in-depth and requires a different attention span, a different commitment to the text (due to its physical presence in the room, and the dozen factors I have listed in previous paragraphs). Online news is better to glance through, to find something that arouses your focus. It does not feel quite so alive as reading that requires us to turn pages, and wipe smudged ink off our fingers when we finish. Powers suggests that programs like the Times Reader which can be viewed offline is the most true to newspapers – the “unplugged” element is crucial to our conception of “reading the newspaper.”
Powers looks on toward the synthetic books of the future, specifically advancements by E Ink. Powers says in the article that eBooks have still not caught on; this article was written in the fall of 2006. You can read for yourself Amazon’s recent letter to shareholders about the Kindle. I think we’re breaking ground in the eBook department; however, we need a more appealing tactile device before I think these will be mass-marketed. Perhaps asses’ hide or sheep skin, like Hamlet’s tables.
Powers closes his article on an optimistic note:
If it’s true that newspapers got some of their best qualities from the paper they were printed on, the good news is the medium itself is not going anywhere. Paper is all around us, quietly doing the same work it’s been doing for centuries. Indeed, what’s most remarkable about the quest for e-paper is the standard by which we measure its progress. Paper itself is the inescapable metaphor, the paradigm, the tantalizing goal. The new medium will be deemed a success if and when it is no longer just an imitation of paper, but the real thing ??? when it becomes paper. It’s not as easy as it looks.
I’ll tell you why I believe him: Books remain alive much longer than we do.