Stupidest Quote of the 21st Century - first Australian entry (AFR 15/8/98)

[Rachel Polanskis]

On Wed, 19 Aug 1998, Alan Kohler wrote:

> As Stewart says no new media has ever wiped out old media, but stone tablets
> these days are confined to a fairly narrow niche market in graveyards. Snail
> mail will have a niche of some sort, so will fax. Newspapers? My betting is
> the niche will be to convey the written word, as opposed to information (if
> that distinction makes sense). The other occupiers of the written word
> market will be books.

Snail mail will always be with us - there is nothing more personal 
than receiving a hand written letter.   That's something 
technology will never overcome.

Likewise, I think we'll always see the book, since people like me 
would look pretty silly taking a laptop in the loo with them (or to bed, &c).

Newspapers I think may change their form, perhaps becoming more tree-friendly,
and may transform into something more closely resembling a compact magazine 
format, as individuals have a ready on-tap stream of information 
in electronic format, so the newspaper will adapt to reflect this,
without being too redundant.  Perhaps the newspaper of the future might 
look more like a Japanese Manga comic book, or maybe it will contain 
mere summaries of news items, with URLs printed at the footnote of each article,taking us full circle?

Maybe the newspaper of the future will be completely unchanged,
except for being what we today would consider parodies of the current state of 
the tabloid press?!  ;)


rachel

Rachel Polanskis                 University of Western Sydney, Nepean
Senior UNIX Admin                PO Box 10, Kingswood NSW 2747
Systems && Operations            Computing && Communications Division Kingswood
r.polanskis@nepean.uws.edu.au    Phone: +61 (0247) 360 291