9 minute read
DIGITAL IMAGERY
PIXEL PROPHET BRAVE NEW WORLD
As we struggle out of the lockdown and start to come to terms with what may be a whole new way of working, it may be a good time to review where we are going as a print on demand service, and some of the clues may be in how we have adapted to changing times over the last decades. Martin Christie returns from furlough.
Long before the internet became a real commercial threat, people working at home, with a brand new PC and an A4 printer, were predicted to herald the end of over-the-counter printing. More recently, the 3D printer was expected to be in everyone’s house so that rather than buy anything, people would just make it themselves. Well, life is never as simple as the pundits predict and, as we know, merely buying a printer – any printer – is the easy bit. Making it work properly, servicing it and feeding it, well that’s where it gets a lot more complicated.
So now more people will be working from home through necessity, in a brand new virtual world that would have been science fantasy even ten years ago, meeting in computer chat rooms, collaborating in cyberspace.
It may be a practical solution short term if large numbers of office workers can no longer be accommodated in close quarters and businesses may be attracted to potential savings in high city centre rents. But is it sustainable in the longer term when the full implications of the changes have not been thought through? There may be more at risk than the loss of the business lunch.
People are social by nature, and society has developed by co-operation and personal interaction. We also learn from that close contact through observation and example and, in so many ways, pick up pointers from each other, which were not directly sought or expected.
This process of serendipity has been very central to human progress since one caveman watched another banging rocks together and thought of a way of making basic tools.
Thinking outside of the box, rather than being constrained by it, is the key to evolution at every level. But is that going to be encouraged, or even allowed, in an environment that sees what it wants to see, and shows what it wants to show.
Group chats with long-lost relatives may be fine to exchange news and gossip without the inconvenience of actually meeting them, but it may not be ideal for a progressive, forwardlooking working environment, where you may only meet the people in your group.
One of the limitations of the internet is you only find what you are looking for, and this selfconfirming circle can produce quite negative results. We know from over-the-counter experience that a good number of customers We know from over-the-counter experience that a good number of customers don’t really know what they want, which is why they prefer to come face to face with a professional who can advise and point them in the right direction
While it’s great to have so much information at your fingertips, if you don’t know which button to push it’s like taking a stab in the dark, and picking things that you can’t actually see and touch is potentially flawed as we already know through experience. In a world when we are supposedly trying to cut down unnecessary journeys, it is perfect madness to have a large percentage of delivered goods returned as a matter of course.
Even working from home, office workers will still need goods and services delivered somewhere as there are still plenty of things that cannot be provided by purely digital information.
The often predicted demise of paper is still a long way off, and while the specifications may be changing, the need for hard copy is still very much with us. One of the reasons is that information still needs to be recorded and preserved so it can be kept and shared over time, not just with the temporary members of a chat room.
Printed papers have been with us and preserved for centuries and handwritten manuscripts for many centuries before that. Digital information has no such track record, and many experts fear it may prove to be far more fragile.
An ancient Persian King once asked his wise men to construct a phrase he could use that would always be true. After much deliberation, they come up with the adage this too shall pass away.
Possibly the world’s first recorded sound bite, this prediction has now been updated for the digital world by one the internet’s wise heads, Vint Cerf, currently a vice president at Google. He is worried that all the images and documents we have been saving on computers will eventually be lost as hardware and software becomes obsolete. Cerf fears that future generations will have little or no record of the 21st Century as we enter what he describes as a “digital Dark Age”.
Old formats of documents that we’ve created or presentations may not be readable by the latest version of the software because backwards compatibility is not always guaranteed.
This revelation may have shocked the cyber geeks who had no idea that their electronic world could crumble into dust as well as the temples of ancient civilisations. But it won’t surprise anyone who has worked in the printon-demand industry during the last decades, nor regular readers of this column.
The days when hard copies of originals could be stacked in a drawer for future use are long gone. Backing up and storing all the vast amounts of digital information in different file formats is enough of a challenge, but there is also the problem that you still have to sort through it all to find anything.
It’s surprising how quickly the general public has accepted digital information without question, and more worrying that it is assumed to be indestructible. The fact that they will commit valuable items, and even entire life history to small pieces of metal and plastic, reveals a faith in technology which is way beyond actual reliability.
Backing up files and photos on discs and hard drives is good practice, and seems a bit like an insurance policy, but you are still hedging your bets on the likelihood of any one of them failing.
The continual deterioration of digital files through saving and transfer is a potential nightmare described as data rot. And, as nobody has any form of digital format older than fifty years, no one really knows if it will survive more than a generation.
It is sobering to remember that the space shuttle was retired, not because the mechanical aerodynamics were out of date, but because NASA could not service software that was more than several decades old.
Now that the technology is literally in the hands of the general public worldwide it is much more of an issue because there is, apart from the basic binary mathematics, no standard for language or coding to interpret the information contained.
In simple terms, we have various formats for text, graphics, digital photographs and now movies and those formats need the correct software to render those objects. Sometimes the standards we use to produce those objects fade away and are replaced by other alternatives and then software that is supposed to render images can’t render older formats, so the images are no longer visible.
Of course out of all of the millions of images uploaded daily on social networking sites, if the vast majority of cute kittens and culinary masterpieces were lost to future generations, it would not be such a great tragedy for human history.
But on a personal note, some things are worth preserving and records that need to be passed on to generations to come, and for that, there is one obvious solution, and that is print.
In light of this, I am designing a storage device that will be able to contain these priceless prints. It will be simple, affordable, and made from recyclable material. It will be easily accessed and quickly searchable. I am going to call it a shoebox. I think I am on a winner here. Just have to work out what to do with all the shoes!
The print industry has seen many developments over the last five hundred years, but the gradual nature of progress over the years has meant stability and a natural progression, and most importantly a product that can be easily shared and stored. We accept that nothing lasts forever, but we have the hard evidence that printed matter can be preserved, even for centuries, if it is properly cared for.
In contrast, we have yet to see digital information survive more than a generation, and worse experience difficulties in transferring and sharing it with others.
Apart from the short-term unreliability of digital information, the longer-term concern is literally how long it will last. It has two aspects. There is the potential degradation of data over time, and continually save and resaving. It is recognised, but impossible to quantify. The second aspect is the obsolescence of the software and hardware needed to read and reproduce the data.
But being able to use it doesn’t mean you have to understand it, much like driving a car doesn’t necessitate an in-depth knowledge of the internal combustion engine or the workings of the clutch mechanism. However, just like the car comparison, when there is a problem like it won’t start or is making an unfamiliar noise, then you have to take it to an expert for advice.
So the newly created generation of home workers may have mastered Zoom, but how are they going to save all the information other than playing back endless video episodes and editing the important bits. Will we see a new role for the copy typist turning all those words
of wisdom into word documents? So many things have not been thought through in the rush to form a short term solution.
There also many things that cannot be properly viewed, especially on a small screen which the majority of people will be using. Large detailed plans, lots of lists of figures all become difficult if scrolling through a limited viewing device, and the potential for missed information is increased. We will already have suffered from customers supposedly checking proofs on a mobile phone while no doubt also checking social media updates.
Putting all of the practical issues aside, there is, of course, one fundamental quality in favour of print, and that is the sheer pleasure of holding something substantial and permanent, not a fleeting view of a screengrab or snapshot. Ironically as it may seem, in the future, the very fact that we are all doing so much online in the virtual world may make actual print more respected and valued.
Print still has a future as long as there are professionals available to preserve it. To misquote William Shakespeare “Oh brave new world that has such people in IT.”
