(2)+Background

__**Historical Background of Print**__ After holding the first public demonstration of the electric light bulb, Thomas Edison famously said, “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.” Indeed, a hundred years down the road, Edison’s prediction has, for the most part, come true.

With the advent of the World Wide Web and other digital contraptions, some now wonder – will the same happen to the printing press? Will e-books and e-magazines completely replace the physical publications of today? Is print even relevant in the Digital Age? What is undeniable though, is the digitization of published works and news articles is already well under way – in May 2011, the number of e-books sold by Amazon actually overtook the total number of print books the company had sold in its entire history. Many big-time newspapers and magazines have also started to offer digital copies of their publications to subscribers, in addition to their already comprehensive websites and web-services. Owing to the limitless nature of digital space, even preservationists have embraced this process of digitization, actively digitizing and archiving historical works worthy of preservation. Project Gutenberg, founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, has in total collected and digitized over 34,000 works of literary or cultural significance.

However, the replacing of old techniques, old ways of doing things with more efficient and convenient methods is not at all a new phenomenon. Since ancient times, we have constantly sought faster, better methods of production to increase our standard of living. And when it comes to distributing information, the same applies. Just as the Digital Age may signal the death of print, the invention of the printing press in the 1400s signaled the death manual, labour-intensive methods of print.

The printing press was to manual methods of print exactly what computers may potentially be to the printing press – a more efficient and practical means of distributing information. In fact, a single Renaissance printing press could produce 3,600 pages per workday, compared to forty by typographic hand printing, and a few by hand-copying. Practicality, it seems, is a chief human concern.

In spite of the soaring popularity of digital works, and the fact that digital publications are making deep inroads into the industry, printed works still form the majority of publications. In 2010, e-book sales accounted for only 9% of total book sales. It seems that the ‘Death of print’ will only occur far in the future, and that for now, at least, print is still very much alive

. media type="youtube" key="tJnkpJfAQVY" height="349" width="560" align="center"

Images courtesy of: []