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From digi to p-books: A fun ‘What if?’
August 25, 2009 | 4:30 am
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By David Rothman
“What if digital media was invented first, back in the 1400’s, and then in the 1990’s, print burst onto the scene? What if thousands of startups began developing print-centric business models, and businesses started converting their processes from digital to print? What if teenagers stopped texting, and started passing notes in class? What if letter writing took hold, replacing email? What if blogs found their business models in shreds as print advertising grabbed all the dollars?” – Dan Blank (via booktrade.info).
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Comments:
Well, I suppose eventually, the world population would decrease from the billions to the millions, fewer people in the world would mean a reversal of global warming, until the glaciers advanced, mankind was pushed back to Africa where it devolved back to its simian ancestors, until the dinosaurs came back, only to be wiped out as the planet lost its cooling ability and resumed being a molten mass of elements careening around the young Solar System.
Boy, that was fun! Let’s do it again!
Now, Steve, what about Billy Pilgrim’s vision in the Vonnegut book on the firebombing of Dresden—Slaughterhouse-Five?
Going backwards, will we now talk about the bombs still falling—rather than going back up into the bomb bays?
David
Following Dan’s logic, they’ll still fall… but by the time they hit the ground, they have become sticks and stones.
All in all, it’s just a silly way for Dan to make the point that he’d like to see people go back to the old ways (at least the way he imagines them as he writes his web blog). Since I don’t have an overriding nostalgia for the “good old days,” I really wouldn’t see the point in going backwards, any more than I’d see the point of abandoning high speed trains in favor of steam engines.
Or maybe I should try this scenario: Since we’ve obviously had electronics since the 1400s, that would mean we’ve also had the incredible infrastructure that goes with it, including the pollution caused by 500 years of (probably coal-fired) electric plants, and global warming that started 300 years ago.
Suddenly, we discover paper… and to fuel the world’s “paper frenzy,” we start clearcutting forests, at just the time when our ecosystem is the most vulnerable. Hello, paper. Goodbye, already-suffering planet.