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The Newspaper of the Future: A Straw-man Proposal in Four Parts |
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Bender W; Cooper M; Davenport G; Haase K; Negroponte N |
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ic |
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July 1991 |
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Symposium on the Future of Newspapers, MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge, MA, July 24-25, 1991. |
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Abstract |
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| The newspaper industry has been referred to as the smoke-stack industry of the
communications age. On the contrary, it is unsurpassed in its ability to gather and
organize vast quantities of time-sensitive information. The weakness of the industry
lies in its outmoded distribution and presentation of that information, as well as its
inability to be responsive to the needs of both individual readers and advertisers.
Mass media no longer need be monolithic, impersonal, synchronous, colloquial or
prepackaged. Rather, newspapers can be redefined to be distributed, responsive to
personal needs and interests, timely, international and dynamically presented.
In this straw-man proposal, we argue that in order to have maximum impact, the newspaper industry must provide timely delivery while facilitating local formatting, personalization and advertising acuity. This refashioning of the industry will be made possible by the intersection of mass media, personal computing and modern communications systems. Ultimately, it is the form in which the information is encoded and made available which will open or close doors to future applications and markets. The underlying premise of this proposal is that the future of not only newspapers, but also all forms of information dissemination, lies in cooperation between the information provider and the audience, both of whom will be operating in a computationally-rich environment. |
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http://mf.media.mit.edu/pubs/conference/StrawManProposal.pdf |
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