In my language we have a saying; “ukuwa kwendlu ukuvuka
kwenye” directly translated to “the fall of one house is the erection of
another”. Whether or not this saying holds true for every aspect of our lives I
can neither say nor prove conclusively but it certainly holds true for the sea
saw which sees the paper industry on one end and the tech industry on the
other. No matter how I look at it these two industries, in their fully evolved states,
simply cannot coexist. One has to bludgeon the other to total submission and,
as you might have guessed, it’s the tech industry that is going to be the perpetrator.
Which should give eco mentalists an extra hour worth of sleep knowing that the
tech industry is conveniently doing their dirt-no, clean work for them. The
implication of this “cosmology” of mine is not that the tech industry is going
to start planting trees and vegetables and such, no, it is to make known that
the baselines for evolution of technology requires marginalizing the need for
paper. I can sense a frown of disapproval from the paper industry’s top brass
but please understand, good sirs, that harming your businesses is one of those collateral
damages that can’t be helped (resorting to evil action for the greater good...
if saving trees is evil, that is).
Over the past five years alone the paper industry has had
to endure some rather treacherous, volatile currents from the tech industry quietly
introducing eBook stores like Kobo and Amazon Kindle, and some various eReaders.
That was just a first line of attack though; the second line was when, not so
long ago, Apple let loose the covers off its iBooks application/concept which
brought about some features that made studying experience more surreal than
real. In a good way.
The assault doesn’t end there, Adobe ,too, have driven
the stake a bit deeper into the heart of the paper industry by the introduction
of the Ink Signature tool for their widely popular Adobe/Acrobat Reader. This
means now you don’t need a pen and paper to sign documents. All of these
advancements in reading technology are making it progressively harder for the
paper industry to justify its continued existence. Atheists would have an
easier time trying to explain the big bang theory and not look weird at the same
time.
However, a combination of habit, technology limitation
(those IPS, TFT, LCD, AMOLED screens are not too kind on the eyes for prolonged
reading) and a lack of comprehension of the social ambitions of the eBook
concept, many are not yet ready to make the transition (not even counting
Luddites). I say many because the details are not specific enough for me to
base my estimations upon. Mind you, a considerable number of people, eco
mentalists aside, seem to appreciate this change. Schools are adopting the
tablet (consequently implanting “eReading” culture to younglings), and many are
at least meditating over the matter, word of mouth has it that some churches’
Pastors are already reading from (digital bibles) tablets, study material in tertiary
institutions is now mostly downloaded rather than handed out and the opposite
(uploading/handing in) rings true to the trend, I now read my weekly dose of
the Sunday Times “newspaper” on my smartphone, it goes on and on and on...
Change is inevitable
The paper industry really only has its muscle which has
been conditioned over the years by being an industry with virtually no
competition and the hope that innovation somehow slows down (which isn’t
happening, not in my books) against the tech industry’s orgy of concepts which
gain a foothold on the paper, as an entity, with dependable (and sometimes
drastic) regularity. If you ask me, for many, this is hardly a battle (if it’s
a battle at all) of “substance”, but that of psychology; who can stir up the
emotions of the masses the most. Can eReaders or apparatus for eReading (your iPads,
Kindle Fires etc) match the novelty of real paper, the feel, the smell?
The tech industry, MY industry, is certainly putting in
the effort and, by all means, harbours no egocentric intentions but the paper
industry has their legacy do the talking for them.
If anything, the recent fall of Nokia has taught me that
legacy alone can’t guarantee eternal success. Nevertheless, the tech industry
is winning this. Eventually.
