19.10.2015

1

PRINT VERSUS DIGITAL MEDIA

http://www.peterkafkas.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/print-vs-digital_banner.jpg

Preamble

• Quotes from:

From Internet to Gutenberg

A lecture presented by Umberto Eco

at The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America

November 12, 1996

http://www.umbertoeco.com/en/from-internet-to-gutenberg-1996.html

19.10.2015

2

According to Plato (in Phaedrus) when Hermes, the alleged inventor of writing, presented his invention to the Pharaoh Thamus, he praised his new technique that was supposed to allow human beings to remember what they would otherwise forget. But the Pharaoh was not so satisfied. "My skillful Theut, he said, memory is a great gift that ought to be kept alive by training it continuously. With your invention people will not be obliged any longer to train memory. They will remember things not because of an internal effort, but by mere virtue of an external device."

Nowadays, nobody shares these preoccupations, for two very simple reasons

1. We know that books are not ways of making somebody else think in our place; on the contrary they are machines that provoke further thoughts. Only after the invention of writing was it possible to write such a masterpiece on spontaneous memory as Proust's La Recherche du Temps Perdu.

19.10.2015

3

2. Secondly, if once upon a time people needed to train their memory in order to remember things, after the invention of writing they had also to train their memory in order to remember books. Books challenge and improve memory; they do not narcotize it.

However, the Pharaoh was instantiating an eternal fear:

the fear that a new technological achievement could abolish or destroy something that we consider precious, fruitful, something that represents for us a value in itself, and a deeply spiritual one.

19.10.2015

4

• More than one thousand years later Victor Hugo in his Notre Dame de Paris, shows us a priest, Claude Frollo, pointing his finger first to a book, then to the towers and to the images of his beloved cathedral, and saying "ceci tuera cela", this will kill that. (The book will kill the cathedral, alphabet will kill images).

MEDIA• The media are a pervasive element in every

society: People's lives and economy are affected in many ways.

• The media are a great engine in the consumer society. They provide jobs for hundreds of thousands of technicians, writers, artists, performers and intellectuals.

• They shape attitudes and beliefs and put pictures of the world into people's minds.

• The press, or "Fourth Estate," also plays a vital role as guardian of democracy.

19.10.2015

5

What is Print Media?

• Dictionary:• print media - a medium that

disseminates printed matter• Print media refers to paper

publications circulated in the form of physical editions of books, magazines, journals and newsletters that reach very large numbers of people.

• Newspapers can broadly be divided into two kinds: the broadsheet newspapers, and the tabloids.

• Print media also includes:– various magazines addressed to men and women

or both, – specialized magazines in fields such as information

technology, science and technique, finance, medicine, affairs, photography, music etc.

– satirical magazines, – magazines covering political and cultural debates, – special magazines of the green and radical left – many other specialized magazines issued for

various target readers.

19.10.2015

6

What is Digital Media• Digital media is digitized content that can

be transmitted over the internet or computer networks.

• This can include text, audio, video, and graphics.

• This means that news from a TV network, newspaper, magazine, etc. that is presented on a Web site or blog can fall into this category.

• Most digital media are based on translating analog data into digital data.

• The Internet began to grow when text was put onto the Internet instead of stored on papers as it was previously.

• Soon after text was put onto computers images followed, then came audio and video onto the Internet.

• Digital media has come a long way in the few short years to become as we know it today and it continues to grow.

19.10.2015

7

• Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/digital-media.html#ixzz3odR5fJLA

Communication – historical approach

• The transfer of information underwent extreme evolution since prehistoric times

• 30,000 years - since the first recorded evidence of written communication

• Early examples of pictorial writing was found in the excavation of Uruk in Mesopotamia, dating from 3500 B.C

19.10.2015

8

• The first alphabetic script appeared in Palestine at about 160 B.C.

• Materials used:

– stone and clay tablets

– papyrus rolls and early parchments papers made of dried reeds in China ( 500-170 B.C.)

– in 105 B.C., Tsai Lun of China invented paper as we know it today

– In 100 A.D. we saw the first bound book on the market

Johann Gutenberg’s invention of printing press

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of _historic_inv entions

19.10.2015

9

• Gutenberg’s brilliant idea aided the creation of the first newspaper printed in Germany in 1609.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of _historic_inv entions

• 1714 brought another important discovery.

• Englishman Henry Mill received the first patent for a typewriter.

http://wikipcpedia.com/wiki/publish-and-be-damned-word-processingdtp/

19.10.2015

10

The first printed photo using a halftone in an American periodical, December 2, 1873

• in 1881 - development of halftone press made possible to reproduce photographs in books and newspapers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half tone

In 1810, Friedrich Koenig applied steam power to printing press. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press#/media/File:Koenig%27s_steam_press_-_1814.png

19.10.2015

11

Exchange of written information between cities as well as continents

• 1831 Joseph Henry invented the first electric telegraph

• 1835 Samuel Morse formulated Morse Code

• 1843 he also produced the first long distance electric telegraph line

• Alexander Bain patented the first fax machine

• 1867 Thomas Edison patented his mimeograph, which was the first office-copying machine

http://siarchiv es.si.edu/oldsite/siarchives-old/history /jhp/fig40.gif

• 1935 the first electric typewriter entered the market.

http://www.stamf ordhistory .org/bl_elec.htm

19.10.2015

12

• 1965 IBM introduced the first word processor

http://www.zdnet.com/article/in-the-beginning-there-was-the-word-processor/

The digital era in typesetting started in early 1970s.

http://creativ epro.com/scanning-around-gene-back-when-ty pesetting-was-craf t/

19.10.2015

13

New Technologies

• Multimedia books

• E-books

http://www.skkatariaandsons.com/dbook.php?978-93-5014-114-4

The death of print?• Perpetual change of media formats

• The appearance of Television and Radio did not ”kill” newspapers

• They continued to co-exist

• 1990 – a new period for newspaper stress

• Tendencies:– Newspapers and magazines keep both

printed and online versions

– Some publication – going to all-digital model

19.10.2015

14

Print vs. digitalAdvantages

Print

• Reliabilty, credibility

• Brand impact

• Graphics – high quality

• Can be carried – trains, planes, at the breakfast table

• There is a publication for every age group

• Tangible – emotional confort

Digital

• Quick and extensive access

• Intertextuality – hyperlinks

• Searchability

• Ability to update

• Ability to remix

• Targeting

• Interaction

• Marketing via links

• Data feedback

It is for you to make a choice

http://blog.justperfect.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Online-newspaper-advertising.png

19.10.2015

15

Sources

• Umberto Eco, From Internet to Gutenberg 1996, http://www.umbertoeco.com/en/from-internet-to-gutenberg-1996.html

• http://www.sphmagazines.com.sg/blog/research/jacqyeo/2012/print-vs-digital-media-the-death-of-print

• http://blastmedia.com/2012/11/06/online-vs-print-media/

• http://www.magazine.org/node/25206

• http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2008/12/the_print_media_are_doomed.html

• https://www.academia.edu/6125892/Print_Newspaper_versus_Online_News_Media_A_Quantitative_Study_on_Young_Generation_Preference

• http://info.actionpaper.net/online-vs-print-e-paper-and- classic-newspaper/

• http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2011/08/print_vs_online.html

• http://samples.professay.com/comparison-essay-online-vs-print-newspaper/