John Miedema

The specifications of the book far exceed those of the computer in almost every respect. … A book boots instantly; it is random access; it has high contrast and great performance. If it came after the laptop, we would say the book is a great invention. Gershenfeld, MIT

The chronological ordering of inventions does not always correspond to the brilliance and importance of the same. Take print. You know, plain old print, paper, books, computer printouts too. It’s been around so long we take for granted the intimate connection between print and our thinking. We use print in so many more ways that we use computer monitors. Look around your office or study. There’s books and the printer paper. Have you completely eliminated your filing cabinet? Not likely. Do you have prints on your walls? What’s that piling up in the garbage can? Old notes? Why were you scribbling when you could have been taking digital notes. Hmm, is that your mail I see over there in the corner? What’s pinned to that bulletin board? Still reading magazines? What kind of old fashioned nut are you?

There’s no question that digital technology wins hands down for many many kinds of information processing tasks. How long did it take the typewriter to vanish in favour of the word processor? Two weeks maybe? Rust in peace. I was undergrad in the late eighties, just at the time when CD-ROMS were introduced to replace the paper indexes. There were only two computers in a corner for searching the indexes to journals. I called it god’s gift to students. What a relief from all that tedious searching in the paper indexes! Then what did I do with my results? I printed them of course.

You never hear the end of stories about how the end of books is just around the corner. Never fails to amuse me each time I see one. But it never happens. Oh, sure it’s just a matter of time. I’m not convinced. I think we’re maybe just a little confused because print was invented so long ago, and the computer monitor is a recent invention. I suggest to you that digital technology is just making it easier for us to get to print. But the goal has never really changed when it comes to important thinking. We still want to get into print.

Let me ask you this question … suppose you were old and at the end of your life, many many years from now. You have thought many great thoughts in your life. Now you’re retiring and reflecting back on your life’s great work. Is your final statement sitting on a website? Or published in a book. What would give you more satisfaction?

The creative process, in its full expression, takes something that never was and brings into being. It starts in the bewildering array of your life’s experience, begins to take shape as your mind develops, comes more fully into being as you make critical choices about what it will and will not be, then narrows into its final and form as you put your idea into words. Now it exists. Likely not forever, and it becomes dynamic again as others are inspired by it. But for now, it is has come to fruition. It has “fixity”. Print is the ultimate expression of fixity. It a snapshot of who you are and what you think. You can put it on the shelf and breathe a sigh of satisfaction. Would you have it any other way?

If inventions always proceeded in order of importance, print would be the next evolution in information technology.