Is print culture dying?

The cultural perception of the importance of print is changing rapidly, and that is what is
truly important now. 

Think of the length of time it took for cell phones to be looked down on as "for yuppies"
to being a necessity for everyone.  Cell phones are now ubiquitous across all cultural and
economic segments of our society, and in most parts of the world.

It is so foolish to think that physical books are sacred.  They're tools for most people. 
Good tools. Excellent tools. Print culture has been a fabulous era of communication and
intellectual, economic and cultural growth.

Yet it is only a small fraction of the world’s population that has access to, much less a
love for physical books and the power they represent.

It is clear that digital reading is going to become ubiquitous sooner, much sooner than
later – unless the world’s significant energy and environmental issues mean that access to
electricity and batteries will be compromised.

But assuming that we solve our infrastructure and environmental challenges, the
economics of printing, in the face of massive uptake of digital reading, will radically
change the landscape of print culture.

Printing is a commodity business where quantity produced significantly reduces the unit
cost of production. Conversely, smaller print runs and the migration to digital printing
will mean that print books become more expensive, even as the selling prices of digital
content are reduced by the explosion of content availability (abundance naturally pushes
prices down) and by the competition for attention between digital reading content and all
other forms of content, like film, video, games and music.

Furthermore, digital workflows and products are significantly more efficient than print
workflows and products. Therefore publishers will embrace them without sentiment,
and people who read will be forced to make economic decisions to buy digital products,
with or without sentiment.

Print culture will never die because books have significance as physical objects. They
are cultural icons. And there are occasions and purposes for the physical object to be
higher and better than the matching digital experience. Commercial printers and
manufacturers of printing presses will do everything they can to drive print costs lower in
the face of digital competition, and they will succeed in slowing the worldwide transition
to digital publishing technologies.
But to believe that print culture can withstand the wave of change brought on by digital
technologies flies in the face of our experience of technology and the speed in which
humans adapt to new technologies.

Print culture will persist the longest in places where it has been the strongest.

But it is certain that print culture will ultimately be replaced as the predominant paradigm
for communication of words by a new form of culture based on digital content delivery,
sharing and consumption. And much sooner than we now believe.

David Wilk
November 2010