+ Page 5 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- Crawford, Walt. "Dreams, Devices, Niches, and Edges: Coping with the Changing Landscape of Information Technology." The Public- Access Computer Systems Review 4, no. 5 (1993): 5-21. To retrieve this file, send the following e-mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 or
[email protected]: GET CRAWFORD PRV4N5 F=MAIL. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1.0 Introduction As I was flying in to Houston Thursday afternoon, in my personal helicopter from the arcology that used to be Redwood City, I used my wrist computer to run some current statistics, with sound and full-color animation of course, on the final stages of the death of print. [1] It's pretty much on schedule. Books have already disappeared, and the last print newspaper will probably cease publication this July. Supermarkets still sell something called mass-market magazines, but they're mostly semi-pornographic VR cubes, except for the few old-fashioned 3-D rags on digital paper. Well, there is one exception: all the paper that used to go into magazines, newspapers, and books is being used for the 300 monthly, weekly, and daily magazines offering reviews and hints to make TopView and NextStep Pentium run better together. Awake now? Well, if you think any part of that opening view mirrors reality now, or is likely to within the next decade--or within my lifetime, for that matter--then you won't be happy with this talk. But then, why are you here in the flesh anyway? For full-blooded futurists, schlepping your body to a conference is hopelessly out of date. If it isn't on the network, it isn't worth bothering with.