TRUTH ABOUT INFORMATION DISPLAY, THE

Print Action, Mar 2004 by Kleper, Michael

"It is difficult to see where the information age is leading primarily because the technologies fueling it are still being developed at a furious rate."

-James Dewar, The Information Age and the Printing Press

Today's printing and publishing process involves repurposing content, publishing through multiple channels, and applying XML coding to separate form from content. all of these operations can serve in one way or another to disassociate print output from other forms of publishing. The result has been that information that would have been published solely in print is also published, or is exclusively published, for on-screen display.

Although on-screen publication has accounted for a reduction in the relative volume of printing, it should be kept in mind that print-on-paper is just another form of display. As such, printers manufacture displays that are composed of one or more layers of ink on a succession of sheets of pulp-based paper. The recognition that printers are display manufacturers is of critical importance for three reasons.

First, it helps to identify where the competition with print exists. Second, it forces printers to be aware of the incredible advances that are being made in the information display field. And, third, it can lead to the identification of ways in which printers can become part of the new generation of display technologies.

Printing is the foundation of our information infrastructure, carrying the content that fuels innovation, records progress, chronicles history, delivers information, inspires creativity, supports learning, provides entertainment, and creates delight and amusement. Print, as an information technology, has played an important role in every aspect of human advancement, from the Renaissance to the Space Age.

Printed paper is not just a surface that holds information; it is an inexpensive, flexible display carrying a persistent message. Virtually all forms of graphic communication and visual media are expressed in some form of information display: a canvas, a wall, a photograph, a computer monitor, a television or movie screen, a PDA or cell phone display, etc. The relative ease by which readers move from reading on paper, to reading on a computer monitor or other electronic panel, and back again, attests both to the similarity of their functions and to the content that they display.

Whereas electronic displays can provide highly accurate renditions of paper-based content, the reverse is not true. In addition, electronic displays are characteristically dynamic in nature, supporting animation and video, whereas the content of printed paper is immutable and permanent. Print is losing its market to various forms of digital expression. An increasing proportion of the work of the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), for example, one of the largest printers and procurers of printed materials in the world, is going electronic.

"We are driven by the printed product because that is where our revenues come from, and, actually, as the printed products have gone down and we provide more and more electronic products, basically what happens is the printed product has to cost more to produce the revenue to support these other products," says Richard Leeds, Jr., manager of the Electronic Systems Development Division for the U.S. Government Printing Office. "We are in a lot of different areas, and we have been asked by the Supreme Court for a Real Server, RealVideo, RealAudio area, so our RealServer is up, and although print-on-demand is not big, we have had different agencies and congressional entities want to have list servers, so we essentially put them up so they can distribute electronically, and although it is kind of like print-ondemand, it's not.

"Over the last few years with our online products, because we are one of the biggest government on-line sites, where we see it, unfortunately, is not only the hits against our [printed] products, but as our revenue [declines] because the more they get used to using the electronic side, of course they want less and less printing.... Printing has really changed from disseminating ink on paper to disseminating through electronic means."

The presentation of information on-screen as opposed to on paper carries with it a variety of inherently different characteristics. The first is that a computer screen is emissive, with light emanating from behind a glass surface, whereas paper is reflective, using the light in its immediate environment. Further distinctions are that:

* A computer screen requires a power source; paper does not,

* A computer screen can display more colours than can be printed on paper,

* A computer screen can display animation and video; paper cannot,

* A computer screen is often stationary; paper is not,

* A computer screen can display different pages, multiple pages, and pages in a variety of sizes; marks on paper are fixed,

* A computer screen can display any of the tens-to-hundreds of thousands of pages of documents stored on its attached computer hard drive whereas paper attains considerable bulk and weight as its volume increases,