Categories: Articles

Reading The Future – Paper or Plastic?

Many people fear that print is dying. The statistics don’t help the situation and the new technology looks promising.

Did you happen to see the issue of Esquire Magazine featuring electronic ink? It looked more like a tiny led display, than electronic ink, and while it came off as impressive on YouTube demos, in person you could feel where they were packing the technology on the page and the whole thing just seemed a little "too much, too soon." We’ve seen this with technology before: the idea is solid, the public is ready for it, but the technology just isn’t ready for prime time. Cost, production and execution are still in their primitive form.

When it comes to reading books, things have moved along quite nicely this past year. There’s still hype over the Sony Reader Digital Book, and who wouldn’t want to get their grubby little hands on the Amazon Kindle? Both look great and could well give reading new legs.

At Demo 2008, a company called, Plastic Logic, demoed their latest digital reader that is specifically geared for business reading. If you thought you were confused over going Kindle or Sony, watch this video:

The power of technology is its ability to inspire. That video demo is inspiring. Whether or not Plastic Logic comes out on top of the digital reading pile remains to be seen, but you can rest assured that a demo like that will inspire many other companies to look at new ways to use this kind of technology.

Do you love going into bookstores and browsing as much as I do? The sad thing is, I used to feel the same way about music stores. Now, I could not be bothered to go into those. Let’s be hopeful that the addition of digital readers will be a "with" not "instead of" model in the future of publishing and bookstores.

In the meantime, what do you think?… how are you going to read in the future?

(hat tip: Andy Nulman – Pow! Right Between The Eyes).

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.