In the Social Life of Information ( p. 176-178) they write about predicted death of paper that never happened. They also mention newspapers that at the time of the book publication (200) looked rather healthy despite some competition from internet news sites.
Today we can clearly see that newspapers in their traditional paper form are dying. And the reason for that is not the technology, e.g. paper vs screen, but the business model. Advertisement that supported newspapers for four hundred years is moving on to the internet. Google and craiglist found a better way to provide relevant ads, and money followed. Cut off from their traditional source of income, newspapers started looking for different business models.
Most likely, a similar fate is awaiting broadcast TV. They are already losing ground to cable, but this trend will probably accelerate when new video-based advertisement models are created.
tags: technology evolution source prediction newspapers tv
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