Can printed information remain an island, cut off from the major storage and information flows in the Networked Society?

First, Digital Printing is a badly mixed label. Computer driven xerographic or ink-based devices come in all shapes, sizes and performance ranges that produce Black & White or Color and covering a wide range of technologies.

The output in all cases is to paper.

So to talk about Printing as a Digital Media is valid as far as where the information originates, but invalid once the information is output to paper.

Thus the life & death battle between printing on paper - a 14th century invention - and computers - a 20th century invention.

Printing from Presses and Duplicators has many advantages. It is the de facto medium for information distribution and the worldwide installed base of presses represents both a large asset base and a large cash flow in hundreds of thousands of businesses. (36,000 in the US, as estimated by TrendWatch in 2001)

Paper has many advantages:
• Portable (in small quantities)
• Low cost per page
• Is excellent for representing high-quality text, graphics and pictures
• Is reasonably good at reproducing color images
• Is an inexpensive and versitile packaging material
• A large percentage of the population understands how to print and read from it

For the last half of the 19th century, forecasters have predicted the demise of the printing business. This proved to be false. Until most recently, paper mills churned out ever higher numbers of both sheet and roll stock and usage increased.

Now, seven years after the Browser brought Internet to millions of people, paper consumption shows evidence of slowing. Just how fast print usage will decline - if at all - depends on the factors that rule all markets; costs and prices and the perceived value to the customer.

It is very likely that computer displays will be replaced by a succession of products that display information on less bulky screens. Some of these will be labeled "digital paper." While this flies in the face of reality - there are no bridges between wood pulp and digital signals - attempts will be made to draw that parallel.

The cost of the high-speed press and related labor, the cost of paper output and it's distribution, is pitted against the cost of a digital device, its attachment to networks, and its output.

Aside from all the hype and benefit statements from vendors both digital and press, we must ask when will information distribution and storage reach a tipping-point? When will it move decisively from paper to digital form? Chips and devices are in a relentless march toward lower and lower costs. Internet participants will top 2 Billion worldwide by the end of the decade. Printing, because of the initial investment in plants and equipment and labor, is pegged close to it's current fixed costs. There are few remainiing places where cost can be taken out of the printing business.

We would assert that society has passed the "tipping-point" and is accelerating toward a world where information is both stored and distributed digitally. Consider these figures recently published from Jupiter Research for current annual volumes of data:

1. Mobile & land lines carry 17.3 exabytes - (10 to the 60th power)
2. TV Broadcasts carry 3,500 terabytes - (10 to the 12th power)
3. Internet carries 170 terabytes - (17 x Library of Congress)
4. Instant Messaging - 288 Billion messages
5. E-mail contains 400,000 terabytes

These quantities are so large that they exceed most people's ability to comprehend the quantity. Perhaps 17 times the quantity of information in the Library of Congress is meaningful.

With the convergence of digital media - Internet, Television and Radio - happening in this decade, and the probable movement toward Real-time Digital Video communication, how much longer will print be able to hold it's place in the world marketplace or will video become the next print?

Terry and Lisa Wellman