For years, people predicted that paper would go extinct, but in all
honesty, I do not think that day will ever come. It is human nature for us to
want to assume that when some new technology comes into our existence, we
should abandon an old one. Out with the old, in with the new as they say. What Alessandro
Ludovico points out in The death of paper (which never
happened) from his book Post-Digital
Print is that we have been predicting the future of paper for years,
especially against threats like the telegraph and audio. There will always be
some threat to the printed medium with the rise of technology, but paper will
always be around. At least that is what I think…
“And yet, despite its widespread
use and incontestably tremendous potential, the hypertext has not yet succeeded
in supplanting the ‘traditional’ text. The development of various ‘wiki’
platforms has dramatically expanded the hypertext’s possibilities for
collective authorship and the compilation of resources. It’s clear that the
hyperlink is now definitely embedded in our culture.” (pg. 28)
In this passage from the text,
Ludovico describes hypertext as a new language. Hypertext allows for something
paper can never be, he says. With the advent of this new language, we should
not fear the extinction of paper but embrace the new possibilities that
hypertext allows for, which is access to numerous material. On the contrary, what
Ludovico says we should be aware of is the role reversal of the medium of paper
and the medium of the Web. The Web has become more preferred over printed
material in terms of archival purposes. The medium of print has become secondhand.
