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'Future' and 'publishing' –
two words that need defining.
By 'future', I'm going to refer to what I think
I may live to see, so that's relatively limited, let's say around
the next decade or so. Alright, let’s just say the next
decade. To make predictions much beyond that without really
deep analysis would simply be hazarding informed guesses.
By 'publishing', I'll talk about what I know
best, that's book and magazine publishing. But we're all publishers
now, we can all disseminate the word by Desk Top Publishing,
Print on Demand, our own websites and bloggers. I'll try and
avoid acronyms, too, because there are so many and there's a
new kind of snobbism in knowing what the acronyms mean.
So, …here's a prediction - there’s
going to be more of the same. Let’s forget the cutting
edge stuff and look at reality. You can have television systems
that hang on the wall, give sensurround sound, 3-d images, home
cinemas – and they’ll still show garbage. Chewing
gum for the eyes and ears. No matter what technical frontier
is crossed, if the programme is lousy, you’ll see a lousy
programme, in double or treble vision. And there'll be the good
stuff as well, of course, but hard to find among the dross.
We are here today because of the digital revolution. Wow! Print
on Demand, Open Access, voice- activated correction, personalised
printing for the most intimate of purposes, - we can do all
sorts of things with our communications. But if they’re
no good, they’re no good. No amount of manipulation of
the digits will make mundane, uninspired writing better. If
what goes in, that creative input, lacks originality, talent
or skill, what comes out will be simply, well, more garbage.
Here’s an extract from the promotional
blurb for Quark Xpress 6: -
“Quark has just released Quark Publishing
System 3 Classic Edition (QPS Classic 3), the next step in the
development of the industry leading software for professional
publishing and editorial workflows,
‘QPS Classic is an out-of-the-box solution
that provides a cross-platform, collaborative tool with simple,
status-based workflow and routing capabilities that can be easily
adapted to different publishing environments. Multiple users
can work on different elements of a QuarkXPress print or Web
layout -including content and page design elements -simultaneously
and in real-time. With QPS Classic, page creation and production
can be distributed to editorial, design, Web, and production
users. QPS Classic provides interactive alerts to keep all users
up to date, dramatically reducing production time.’
As the foundation for QPS Classic 3, QuarkXPress
6 allows users to manage projects with mixed print and Web layouts,
share colours, share style sheets, and synchronise text. Tables
can now be assigned to editors who can enter the appropriate
data using QuarkCopyDesk or import data and charts from Microsoft
Excel — without losing the formatting from the source
document”
Well, doesn’t that make you think that
we are taking a bold step forward every time a new page is produced,
another magazine or book hits the stalls? But it’s simply
the means to an end – and end which we call ‘publishing’.
Because you have a Rocket-e book, enabling you to download files
and read them on the beach then fold up the screen and put it
in your back pocket – if you’re wearing clothes
– it doesn’t make what is published any better,
what is said on the screen. We don’t have to revere technology
– it’s a means to an end and the end is to inform,
entertain, disseminate. It’s great having POD but it doesn’t
make a book intrinsically better: it just makes it more readily
available.
You can spend an exhausting day trolling through
web page after web page, fantastic information at your fingertips,
but actually it’s a pretty piss poor way of spending your
day. Makes people feel they've done a full days work by looking
at stuff they never wanted to know and wouldn't read if it was
placed in front of them as an article. They'll go blind with
too much of that (that’s what I was told as a child).
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