Article Image

IPFS News Link • Future Predictions

Predicting the Death of Print

• Christopher Mims via Technology Review
Two years ago print was going to soldier on another 10 years. Now it's five--or fewer.

What a difference two years makes.

In 2008, Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired magazine, told a reporter for the New York Observer that ten years hence (or sometime around 2018) ink on paper magazines would remain the dominant delivery mechanism for the contents of his publication. When asked whether magazines would be supplanted by then, he answered:

"In a decade time frame?" asked Chris Anderson, editor of Wired. "No. Technology adoption happens slowly. This is the editor of Wired telling you no. Obviously, newspapers are going to be changing dramatically over the next few years, but magazines are not newspapers. And I think magazines 10 years from now are going to look something like they do now."

Editors for Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and Us Weekly all said the same thing. Now every single one of them, save Us Weekly, is already on the iPad or has an app in the works.

Changing reading habits brought about by the iPad, the Kindle and the tsunami of other tablet reading devices that will shortly be available inspired Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT's Media Lab and the father of the One Laptop Per Child project, to declare earlier this month that the physical book is dead in 5 years.

 

www.universityofreason.com/a/29887/KWADzukm