Throwing The Book (Of Opinions) On "Will Print Media Survive?" - IMRAN™

Throwing The Book (Of Opinions) On "Will Print Media Survive?" - IMRAN™
This is one of the questions I have seen asked for my literally 3 decades spent living in America (this coming week!) The irony of this question is that the words print and media have some overlap. Media, as in the industry encompassing information, news, knowledge, views, commentary, and print, a medium of distributing that content.
So, if the question is, will the “media” (industry) survive…… indeed, the answer is Yes, the real problem of fascism style labeling of real news as fake news and real(ly) fake news as (alternative?) facts notwithstanding, Will PRINT as a medium used by the media (industry) survive, is a more complex one. In the long run (when we are all dead anyway, as John Maynard Keynes said and wrote, ironically, in print, a long time ago), the pace of innovation, the sheer volume of information and knowledge, the staggering number of content types, content creators, and content creators, will make it practically impossible to rely on printed paper as the mainstream mass-use medium.
There are not enough trees, one could say, to sustain that volume of paper production, without destroying the remaining forests of the planet, regardless of how much reforestation gets done. Also, if we look at the real long run, when increasing numbers of us will be able to explore space travel, there is just no practical sense in bringing printing equipment on space rockets and even spaceships, much less trees and other plant forms to produce traditional paper. Plus, the amount of information we are already used to having at our fingertips just would not translate into printed paper as a practical means to carry it around.
Having said that, however, I will also say this, or as another great mind said last century or even earlier, predictions of the death of paper/print are exaggerated. When computers came on the scene, with dot matrix, inkjet, laser and color laser printers soon following, the actual production and consumption of paper grew massively.
That rate of growth, especially in a planet starved of space to store the paper, or grow the raw materials for paper, plus a species (not)hell-bound on finding new places to live on in space, will not be sustainable. So, I see traditional, especially high quality paper based printing becoming a growth industry, where the vanity of having a hardbound book rather than just being the author of an eBook, will ensure its survival for a while, much like vinyl albums are still around despite higher resolution audio sampling of today’s digital music libraries fitting in our back pockets.
Another interesting twist may be the very notion of paper to be printed on. If the current pace of innovation continues, what is to keep us from not having literally infinite printed books, where the actual electronic screens become so thin and so embedded into plant and forest based paper pages, that we could still be holding a paper book or two in hand, where flipping pages gives the tactile experience we are used to for millennia, but with all the words of the universe surrounding us in an invisible omnipresent network.
What do you think?

Imran Anwar
Tampa Bay, Florida
12/31/2018

© 2018 IMRAN™

Image original source unknown.

Does Science Prevent Or Prove The Existence Of God? - IMRAN™

"Afalaa Tatafakaroon". Will You Not Think? That is a line in the Holy ‪‎Quran‬.

I pray Oh God, Help Us Understand The Secrets Of Science & The Universe, So We Understand You!

I am sure other holy books have similar statements about using our minds. But for some reason, a lot that modern organized religions seem to be do is make people close their minds and blindly follow whatever some smooth talking preachers built up as 'The Truth' over the last few centuries. The truth is, we are far from understanding the ultimate truths of the ‪‎Universe‬.

I am sure you are among the many educated people who believe in ‪‎Science‬ but also believe in ‪‎God‬ the Omnipotent Creator. "Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God" is an interesting article though it does not have enough information to fully live up to its headline, but it is a useful point of reference in The Wall Street Journal.

I've always believed that not only is the truth out there, but also that is it not going to be one or other extreme of Science No God versus God No ‪‎Evolution‬ etc. Instead, it will be a combination or the two, or likely, even of things we do not even yet comprehend which do not fall under science or ‪‎religion‬.

The more I studied science and even ‪‎engineering‬, the more ridiculous it seemed to me to believe in pure random creation of the universe, purely randomly leading to ‪‎Earth‬'s creation, purely randomly leading to life and purely randomly leading to humans.

How many times do I have smash some rubber, glass, steel, carbon fiber, and plastic together to create a perfect ‪‎Ferrari‬? I refuse to believe that any of my beloved beautiful loves and their gifts of unconditional love submitted to me, or for that matter, the perfection of Charlize Theron, are random accidents. ;-)

Nor do I blindly believe that some texts collected over the last 2000 years when people did not even understand the nature of science, are somehow the most accurate depictions of the Universe.

They are powerful books with stories to help us ideally be better human beings (if you take out the parts about killing others that almost all the books of the time command).

No, people, the earth is more than 5000 years old, just like the sun does NOT revolve around the earth. There IS evolution that takes place and genetic changes and mutations that are being recorded by science based on our current state of life and the planet. But, no, evolution is likely not the source of the perfect imperfection we call human life.

In their insistence of There Is No God, it seems that even supposedly people gets almost as rabidly fanatical as any Bible-thumping persons who believe that God created the Earth 5000 years ago or something like that, refuting evolution, while believing a man could walk on water and bring the dead back to life, and more.

Many believe in ‪‎angels‬ too. The truth is likely a combination of things is a blend of the two and maybe even more. Maybe God is the Creator of this Universe, as the grand designer of his project... maybe Angels are his engineers, and project managers,... maybe the day he shuts down the project for recycling is the day of judgement.

But, then, who does he work for? Who created HIM? And what giant box does the Universe fit inside that may be part of a larger ‪‎Multiverse‬, which may be one of many in an ‪‎Omniverse‬... and so on.

Knowing the infinite depth of our ignorance, even our inability to fathom the concepts that would entail, is another of the gifts of the Creator, to use our MINDS to even measure what we do NOT know.

We should not just blindly parrot things we were religiously brainwashed into believing as ‪‎children‬. We must, instead, try to figure out the mysteries of science, if we are to ever figure out the mystery of the universe, which in turn may help us get closer to understanding the mystery of the most supreme scientist of all, God!

What do you think?

 

Imran Anwar