I arrived at the Knoxville, TN airpot a bit ago for my slightly delayed flight back to San Jose via Dallas. Since I finished my book on the flight(s) out, I stopped by one of the shops to do something I rarely do: buy print media. Well, I still buy books now and then. But today I bought a couple of magazines: Disocver and Business Week.
I sat in the Ruby Tuesday's at the airport and managed to read a few articles in Business Week. After a bit I noticed that I was reading stories that I'd probably never read on-line. My on-line reading tends to be a lot more focused and directed. Reading for at a relaxed pace for pleasure is a whole different feeling.
It makes me wonder what I'd do with a Kindle or iPad if I had one. Would I use it the same way I read on a computer? Or would it be more like reading a magazine?
Hard to say. I have no plans to buy either device, but in a few years when I replace my existing portable computing devices, odds are that I'll have something tablet-like.
I'm not sure I'd want to be in the magazine business a few years from now. I feel like it's following the "lead" (if you can call it that) of the newspaper industry.
Interesting times.
Posted by jzawodn at January 30, 2010 10:37 AM
Have you seen this? http://berglondon.com/blog/2009/12/17/magplus/
You remind me of another computerized reading issue. Some major libraries went to "closed stacks," you look up a book in the computerized catalog, poke a button, and a clerk goes and retrieves it for you. You are not permitted to browse through the bookshelves. Many scholars complained that they often found more relevant books by searching the physical shelf near the book they were searching for. And that is the point of the cataloging system, books on similar topics are next to each other, so you can find them more easily while browsing. But closed stacks eliminate the possibility of browsing the library shelves.
This reminds me of college... I took a class about media, and how computerized "agents" (RSS readers, news alerts, etc) would deliver us news and the side effect is that we'd have tunnel vision in terms of what we read.
I feel like I experience that already. Day-to-day I casually glance at magazines left around the office, and headlines in newspaper stands, but unless I happen to catch the morning news during my workout, I am strictly spoonfed a narrow genre of articles. RSS is actually worse than going to web sites, because web sites will try to cross promote.
Occasionally I try to hit up mainstream news like CNN just to be aware of the world around me outside of the tech-bubble... but sometimes I forget.
I still get Wired and National Geographic simply because otherwise I might see but one of the articles online. And because sometimes, my laptop's battery is low.
for me, I prefer to paper. It's a real thing I can control. I like writing more than typing.
i prefer paper too, just because of the kinda old school feeling. but can't archive all my docs without my macbook..
It's a rare chance that one cannot get everything on computer, but it might be as it is a machine and anything can be happened at any time with it.
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