2007 : WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT? [1]

walter_isaacson's picture [5]
President and CEO of the Aspen Institute; author, Steve Jobs and Einstein: His Life and Universe
President & CEO, Aspen Institute. Former CEO, CNN, Managing Editor, TIME; Author, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.

Print As a Technology

I am very optimistic about print as a technology. Words on paper are a wonderful information storage, retrieval, distribution, and consumer product. That is why I appreciate the fact that many Edge forums are transformed into books, and it's why I hope someday that there is a gorgeous Edge Magazine that I can flip through and touch. Imagine if we had been getting our information delivered digitally to our screens for the past 400 years. Then some modern Gutenberg had come up with a technology that was able to transfer these words and pictures onto pages that could be delivered to our doorstep, and we could take them to the backyard, the bath, or the bus. We would be thrilled with this technological leap forward, and we would predict that someday it might replace the internet.