On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 7:52 PM, Ray Saintonge <[email protected]> wrote: > Sage Ross wrote: >> This is a typical pattern when a complex technology is introduced in >> the presence of a simpler one; it's not a simple matter of >> replacement, and old technologies (where the infrastructure is easy to >> maintain) can stick around and even become more significant, even >> while a complex technology spreads as well. (See David Edgerton, The >> Shock of the Old.) >> > > Results vary. Slide-rules were replaced by electronic calculators very > quickly.
Certainly results vary. Slide-rules, I suggest, do not make a good ...used as they were almost exclusively by the upper educational tiers in developed countries. For something broader that serves a more fundamental role in society (like storage and transmission of knowledge), old, easy to maintain technologies are likely to co-exist and even thrive alongside higher-tech ones. It's a whole lot easier to manufacture books in a poor country than to maintain the infrastructure for robust Internet participation. From the perspectives of resources, required technical expertise, infrastructure maintainability (shelves in a dry room vs. electricity and continual replacement of short-lived hardware), there are advantages to the older technology. >> I'm speculating here, but it would not surprise me at all if amount of >> print publishing is still growing, and could continue to do so for a >> few more decades at least. > I agree that it is probably still growing, but I would not measure its > prognosis in decades. That technology had a big boost in the 1830s when > rag papers were replaced by the much cheaper wood-pulp papers. Now the > rapidly declining costs of electronic storage are in conflict with > increasing costs of paper production and shipping. When environmental > factors are brought in the costs go up even more. Perhaps the tipping > point is reached when the new technology becomes accessible and > affordable to a high percentage of the world's population. > Certainly, things are looking up for continued expansion of electronic communication (dependent, of course, on economic developments). But with broad classes of technologies like printing and electronic communication, I suggest that there are not global tipping points, because of the drastic economic inequalities of the modern world. Some or many cultures may reach a tipping point (even here, I'm skeptical, given the widely acknowledge virtues of traditional print even in rich cultures; the Internet has not brought a significant decline in US printing, even though the Internet is now very widely available to Americans). But a global tipping point? Globalization is powerful, but not all-powerful. Will poor countries develop electronic communication instead of printing industries, or alongside them, or first print and only later electronic? The last two seem more likely, to me. Print-on-demand, especially, means that printed distribution of Wikimedia project material is probably going to be on the rise for quite a while. I don't think anyone can predict with certainty what the trajectory of print vs. electronic communication will be. But I do think it would be myopic NOT to consider print among the likely significant ways material will get reused. -Sage (User:Ragesoss) _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
