An important question in today’s information environment is how will people receive their news? The centuries old model of print may be going to the margins because of financial challenges: more readers requires more printed copies, requiring larger and more expensive printing plants and distribution channels. The Age of Print may be dead.
The Gutenberg Parenthesis is the theory that the age of text was a temporary interruption, a manifestation of technology where information, knowledge and truth were structured and “owned” in volumes. We are “going forward to the past” where conversation, gossip, the visceral and unstructured content dominates.
Ross Dawson wrote earlier this year that newspapers in their current form (emphasis mine) will be irrelevant in Australia in 2022. Dawson created a map titled the Newspaper Extinction Timeline and a key factors diagram to support his argument.
His prediction is newspapers will be out in the US in 2017, the UK and Iceland in 2019, and so one.
What are your thoughts?
Image: Thomas Pettitt
