“It’s not that hard to predict what will happen in the future… but it is very hard to predict with any accuracy when things will happen,” Bob Cringely writes for I, Cringely.
“For technologies, I tend to see events happening long before they actually do, which makes me something of a prophet, though a pretty useless one,” Cringely writes. “This may be proved yet again in the coming months as Apple and other companies attempt to take most of the paper out of publishing, something I thought we were about to do 15 years ago, but didn’t.”
“The rumor this week is that Apple’s long awaited tablet computer is some form of electronic reader and that Apple intends to get into the distribution of content for this new platform, just as it earlier did for the music, TV and movie businesses with the iPod and iTunes,” Cringely writes.
“I have no inside knowledge about Apple’s plans, but as one of the guys who came up with the whole electronic publication idea, I think I’m in a position to put it in perspective,” Cringely writes.
“Technology is the least of this. Yes, we need an electronic medium that is price-competitive with what it replaces, but it doesn’t take an Apple per se to do that,” Cringely writes. “The much harder parts are the business model and the mojo.”
Full article here.
Well it will take Apple Mojo to make publishers move to a new business model. Apple now has a proven track record in this and the publishing industry as a whole knows that if Apple can’t do it no one can but, if Apple can make it work then other’s will copy it and then industry will live on for a while longer any way.
Gaze at yourself in the mirror much?
Wow.
Cringely has gotten much more full of himself since the last time I read him.
It should read “It’s not hard to predict what will happen in the future, but it’s nearly impossible to be right.”
MDN is slipping. Given Cringely’s history this was just begging… absolutely BEGGING for a nicely barbed MDN take.
I wouldn’t presume to attempt my own but was a little disappointed when I got to the bottom of the story and found no take.
Cringely has obviously failed to do any research into his story. Will text-based media become more prevalent? Probably. Will it remove paper from the publishing business? Absolutely not.
Readability and resolution is too low, even at 1080 dpi. Several studies have been conducted that paper is much easier and faster to read than anything on-screen, by a factor of 3.
Schools with laptop programs are struggling for this very reason, despite the heavy financial and infrastructure investment. Many are dropping the program and moving back to books. Those who have found some success still have books on campus, due to those that refuse to struggle with on-screen reading.
Even with special fonts created for on-screen (or web) based reading, the difficult is still significant enough to not see Cringely’s idiocy come true.
I made a prediction once. Sure enough, when I got home and checked in my pants there was indeed a surprise waiting for me!
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Couldn’t read the story…. Cringley’s ego wouldn’t fit on the screen.
Wow…. mdn magic word: Large
Bob Cringely couldn’t predict the weather if he was standing in the rain.
I predict that in thousands of years, after a great nuclear war, the world will be ruled by talking apes, and humans will be nothing more than mute animals for the apes fiendish medical experiments…
ooops, sorry – I meant to ask: does that make me a prophet too?
Remember that the NeXT (Job’s creation) was the first computer ever to offer real Display Postscript.
ie: The data displayed on the screen is the same date that goes to the printer…
we need to stop paying attention to Cringely
“but as one of the guys who came up with the whole electronic publication idea, I think I’m in a position to put it in perspective”
nothing about that is true, its like Al Gore invented the internet level of absurdity
Cringely is not on my reading list and no true computer science people should pay him the least amount of attention
A few decades ago I read an article about a study of people who made predictions… all kinds of people from esteemed scientists to mumbo-jumbo psychics.
Their accuracy rates worked out to something like 1 (or less) out of 10.
About the same as an average person making a wild guess.
It’s actually very hard to predict the future, he’s completely wrong.
After such a flawed premise it isn’t worth reading on.
@Umm…
Yes, and factually, no. Cheap and poor displays are inferior to paper. Good displays with good character display technology are as good or better.It is not just a question of dpi.
There are publishing areas where paper either is out, or is clearly on the way out. I am actively involved in laboratory research, at a high level. I read many scientific journals. It has been years since I have made use of a paper copy, even though the majority of journals still produce a paper edition. (Some very important publications are electronic only.) Most older material has now been digitized.
Reading and record-keeping just is much more efficient with a computer than with paper.
This does not automatically translate into a promise of the demise of paper for general “print” production, but at least it does not make Cringley’s predictions seem unreasonable.
Another observation: MDN as a paper publication is unthinkable.
@Planar
FWIW, Al Gore never claimed to have invented the internet (see http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp). That was all Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh (no doubt promoted by a whole slew of neocon talking heads).
Nevertheless, I agree with you that Cringely’s comments are as absurd as you suggest.
Why read Cringely?
To quote Jessica Rabbit: “He makes me laugh”
As my dear departed Dad used to say, you can’t wipe your ass with a cathode ray tube. Actually, he said a TV, but you get the picture.
Let’s rephrase it for today’s world.
You can’t wipe your ass with a LCD screen. Electronic media can’t replace paper everywhere.
@ Big Als MBP
“You can’t wipe your ass with a LCD screen. Electronic media can’t replace paper everywhere.”
But you can try. And trying is what counts. I would start wiping with http://www.cringely.com on a Dell display.
It’s the iBook, stupid. Think Kindle, only a hundred times better, looks like a large iPhone, easy to read, with music, movies, the web, virtual keyboard, and iWorks. A killer.
It’s already happening. There are many forms of electronic print, from news sources, scientific and industry journals, blogs, etc. The iPhone is a good example of a digital unit being used for many types of reading. I don’t know if anyone would buy a 10 inch tablet for $800. But perhaps there will be many applications and web services that will generate a multitude of niches.
Cringely is a pseudonym and the guy has problems with the truth:
Stanford
Stephens earned a bachelor’s degree from the College of Wooster in Ohio[1] in 1975.
In 1998, it was revealed[6][7][8] that Stephens had falsely claimed to have received a Ph.D. from Stanford University and to have been employed as a professor there. Stanford’s administration stated that while Stephens had been a teaching assistant and had pursued course work toward a doctoral degree, he had never held a professorship nor had he been awarded the degree. Stephens then stated that while he had received a master’s degree from the department of communications and completed the classes and tests required for the Ph.D., he acknowledged that he failed to complete his dissertation. Asked about the resulting controversy, Stephens told a reporter: “[A] new fact has now become painfully clear to me: you don’t say you have the Ph.D unless you REALLY have the Ph.D.”[9]
Isn’t Cringely a sudonym for multiple writers?
Many people here don’t seem to realize that.
Man, some of you people take Cringely’s writing style far too seriously. I think we very well could see Apple’s tablet lead to a shift in publishing just like iTunes and iPods have changed the music business. Given the vanishing market for print publications, this could be a boost to media outlets.