I have a few bones to pick with this Forbes soapbox article. Firstly, why would it surprise anyone that cashed-up Old Media wouldn't see the light eventually (let's not forget they mostly nay-sayed to begin with) and then jump in buying up the new, hardier post-techwreck upstarts? Especially when the writing's now plainly on the wall? The upstart is here, banging on the door.
Whilst I accept the premise that "old media" will adapt, I disagree with the thrust of the article, that all previous forms of media remain intact and will continue to flourish in "a bigger pie". The pie may indeed be bigger - there are more consumers with more cash in hand now than 50 years ago, for starters - but the forms of media that were around 50 years ago - even 25 years ago - have certainly not 'flourished'. They may look healthy now but that's a veneer - what they are today exists only because of a painful and lengthy process of adaptation to previous change.
Anyway, Clem Chambers writes in part that it was said that "The invention of radio was going to kill newspapers; the advent of television was going to kill radio, cinema and newspapers. The older among us will remember that the computer was going to banish paper from the office and replace textbooks and so on. Yet in all instances, there has never been more apparently "obsolete media" around than today".
Not everyone believes - or has in the past stated - that a new invention "kills" prior art. Sometimes it does, or seems to, just as TV did overwhelm cinema. If you consider it to be otherwise, consider that there used to be cinemas in every suburb, in the tiniest communities - just as there were dance halls, community meeting rooms and public libraries everywhere. Radio and then TV steadily drove down patronage, before cinema fought back with multiplexes; and now cinema is adapting again to DVD and online entertainment options. Cinema may not have been "killed" but it's a very different - and far less dominant- beast from, say, the 1940s version.
Exactly the same applies to radio and newspapers. Radio was the centre of our lives for a while, the fastest way to obtain information and a new source for entertainment. It did impact newspapers hugely and still does. Indeed newspapers adapted and competed but they noticeably increased their op-ed content, decreased their frequency, merged and generally looked desperately around for new ways to survive. It was a major and very public reorganisation and regrouping from the 1960s to the 80s that led to what Clem sees as the flourishing "old media" we see now. But now radio, newspapers and TV itself are threatened by the Internet. Radio is already marginalised. Yes, it has adapted, just as TV is adapting, and they both have found ways to cut costs and cling to their niches. But radio certainly isn't the beast that it was and TV is now facing the same competitive pressures - and losing both viewers and revenue.
As for the myth of the 'paperless office', Clem is clearly not old enough to recall what offices were like before ubiquitous computing. Look at the finance industry for just one example. Bank books were indeed books with handwritten entries. Ledgers were on paper and balances had to be made available daily - on paper. Customer records were on paper. Paper forms for new accounts. Paper forms for every transaction, credit or debit. Offices were packed with paper files that represented the account details of every customer. Typewriters where everywhere. We used handwriting a lot more. We kept everything - on paper. It was a paper-based world.
If you replicated this paper-based information collection, storage and presentation stream to the scale and breadth of today's requirements - well it wouldn't work, would it? It may have been rash to declare the end of paper in the office, but like cinema, radio, TV and newspapers its use has changed profoundly and - relatively speaking - has declined enormously.
Which brings me to Clem's claim that the textbook is also flourishing in this modern digital age. Perhaps he means that the textbook has morphed into an online entity; because paper-based textbooks are on the nose. Children are increasingly required to have laptops in their schoolbags, not paper-based boat anchors.
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