Hamlet's blackberry: why paper is eternal

• William Powers
• Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy

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21 August 2007Many people argues that paper?s long career as a medium of human communication, and in particular as a purveyor of news, is ending. But there are cognitive, cultural and social dimensions to the human-paper dynamic that come into play every time any kind of paper, from a tiny Post-it note to a groaning Sunday newspaper, is used to convey, retrieve or store information. Paper does these jobs in a way that pleases us, which is why, for centuries, we have liked having it around. It?s also why we will never give it up as a medium, not completely, according to William Powers. For some of the roles paper currently fulfills in our media lives, there is no better alternative currently available. And the most promising candidates are technologies that are striving to be more, not less, like paper. Indeed, the pertinent question may be not whether the old medium will survive, but whether the new ones will ever escape paper?s enormous shadow.