Bubble wrap, book scanning and the demise of the NY Times
First, take out your frustration here:
http://www.virtual-bubblewrap.com/popnow.shtml
In other news, Google is in the process of scanning in hundreds of thousands of books for their database. When I was consulting at TV Guide, there was a similar, though more mundane, project ot scan in every single TV guide so that they would have better access to their collateral. There were 6 women at corporate headquarters that would scan in the pages one by one, much like a bunch of folks in Stanford seem to be doing. At the time I wondered whether MRI technology couldn't be paired with XRay scanning and a smart image processing algorithm to make the process a lot less labor intensive. I don't exactly know how MRIs work but essentially it seems to be capable of getting xray-slices at a particular depth. Shouldn't this be able to pick up the ink sitting on a page?
Finally, there's a fascinating video some folks made here about 20 years hence when blogs and Googlenews technology have run the NYTimes out of business. At first it seemed extraordinarily dystopian and frightening, but maybe it's not that bad to have anyone be a news gatherer each establishing their own credibility. Downside: expressway to balkinization. But hey, we're going that way anyway, right?
Why it won't really happen: weren't E-books supposed to have infiltrated our laps, coffee shops and schools by now? People aren't giving up their Sunday with the Times anytime soon.
Why it might: Kids these days. I grew up on the cusp of the internet boom and I hardly spend any money on newspapers (though I do get to bum the Week in Review off Mari every Sunday). I think getting news from a handful of paper-based sources may be foreign to college kids these days.
I know the paper vs. internet debate misses part of the point of the video which is about how news is "manufactured"; that the old-school editor-in-chief is a relic. But medium is wrapped up in the whole process and isn't simply a artbitrary last step. Witness the effect medium has on the way news is manufactured for TV, radio, print, print weeklys and, of course, internet.
http://www.virtual-bubblewrap.com/popnow.shtml
In other news, Google is in the process of scanning in hundreds of thousands of books for their database. When I was consulting at TV Guide, there was a similar, though more mundane, project ot scan in every single TV guide so that they would have better access to their collateral. There were 6 women at corporate headquarters that would scan in the pages one by one, much like a bunch of folks in Stanford seem to be doing. At the time I wondered whether MRI technology couldn't be paired with XRay scanning and a smart image processing algorithm to make the process a lot less labor intensive. I don't exactly know how MRIs work but essentially it seems to be capable of getting xray-slices at a particular depth. Shouldn't this be able to pick up the ink sitting on a page?
Finally, there's a fascinating video some folks made here about 20 years hence when blogs and Googlenews technology have run the NYTimes out of business. At first it seemed extraordinarily dystopian and frightening, but maybe it's not that bad to have anyone be a news gatherer each establishing their own credibility. Downside: expressway to balkinization. But hey, we're going that way anyway, right?
Why it won't really happen: weren't E-books supposed to have infiltrated our laps, coffee shops and schools by now? People aren't giving up their Sunday with the Times anytime soon.
Why it might: Kids these days. I grew up on the cusp of the internet boom and I hardly spend any money on newspapers (though I do get to bum the Week in Review off Mari every Sunday). I think getting news from a handful of paper-based sources may be foreign to college kids these days.
I know the paper vs. internet debate misses part of the point of the video which is about how news is "manufactured"; that the old-school editor-in-chief is a relic. But medium is wrapped up in the whole process and isn't simply a artbitrary last step. Witness the effect medium has on the way news is manufactured for TV, radio, print, print weeklys and, of course, internet.
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