[Foundation-l] Attribution survey, first results

[Sage Ross]

On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 7:52 PM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Sage Ross wrote:
>> This is a typical pattern when a complex technology is introduced in
>> the presence of a simpler one; it's not a simple matter of
>> replacement, and old technologies (where the infrastructure is easy to
>> maintain) can stick around and even become more significant, even
>> while a complex technology spreads as well.  (See David Edgerton, The
>> Shock of the Old.)
>>
>
> Results vary.  Slide-rules were replaced by electronic calculators very
> quickly.

Certainly results vary.  Slide-rules, I suggest, do not make a good
...used as they were almost exclusively by the upper educational tiers
in developed countries.  For something broader that serves a more
fundamental role in society (like storage and transmission of
knowledge), old, easy to maintain technologies are likely to co-exist
and even thrive alongside higher-tech ones.

It's a whole lot easier to manufacture books in a poor country than to
maintain the infrastructure for robust Internet participation.  From
the perspectives of resources, required technical expertise,
infrastructure maintainability (shelves in a dry room vs. electricity
and continual replacement of short-lived hardware), there are
advantages to the older technology.

>> I'm speculating here, but it would not surprise me at all if amount of
>> print publishing is still growing, and could continue to do so for a
>> few more decades at least.
> I agree that it is probably still growing, but I would not measure its
> prognosis in decades.  That technology had a big boost in the 1830s when
> rag papers were replaced by the much cheaper wood-pulp papers.  Now the
> rapidly declining costs of electronic storage are in conflict with
> increasing costs of paper production and shipping.  When environmental
> factors are brought in the costs go up even more.  Perhaps the tipping
> point is reached when the new technology becomes accessible and
> affordable to a high percentage of the world's population.
>

Certainly, things are looking up for continued expansion of electronic
communication (dependent, of course, on economic developments).  But
with broad classes of technologies like printing and electronic
communication, I suggest that there are not global tipping points,
because of the drastic economic inequalities of the modern world.
Some or many cultures may reach a tipping point (even here, I'm
skeptical, given the widely acknowledge virtues of traditional print
even in rich cultures; the Internet has not brought a significant
decline in US printing, even though the Internet is now very widely
available to Americans).  But a global tipping point?  Globalization
is powerful, but not all-powerful.

Will poor countries develop electronic communication instead of
printing industries, or alongside them, or first print and only later
electronic?  The last two seem more likely, to me.  Print-on-demand,
especially, means that printed distribution of Wikimedia project
material is probably going to be on the rise for quite a while.

I don't think anyone can predict with certainty what the trajectory of
print vs. electronic communication will be.  But I do think it would
be myopic NOT to consider print among the likely significant ways
material will get reused.

-Sage (User:Ragesoss)