A lot of people have complained about the way that we’re seeing printed media move online and become digital media. Every year there are hundreds of printed magazines that convert their publishing onto the web in order to save money and to speed up the publishing process. The blogging sensation has long been present, and the instant publication of an article is way more justifiable than printing a paper magazine. There are of course a lot of people who think this is completely insane since printed media has a certain appeal to it.
The argument is that if we lose printed media, we also lose an essential part of building knowledge. However, it goes deeper than that. It’s apparent that if we lose printed media, we also lose one of the fundamental blocks in education. What will become of all the knowledge we once learned from books? With the spiraling economy, we certainly can’t afford to buy computers for every kid in school. Even if some schools could actually afford them, we are a long way from the utopia where every school could get them. So what can we do to make sure we can keep the best parts of both worlds?
The Smart Bookrest Docking System is a new concept that hopes to bridge the gap between digital and printed media. It’s basically a dock for your smartphone that also has a dock for your newspaper or magazine. The dock has an overhead scanner that scans QR codes and instantly shows additional material about the same topic as you read the pages of your printed magazine.
Designed by In-oh Yoo and Tae-soon Nam for Metatrend Institute, this gadget could potentially be a great product; however, everything I know about digital media tells me that it will take far too many steps for the user/reader to go through in order to actually start reading a newspaper or a magazine. This will ultimately make this solution inferior to all the ordinary ways of reading either digital or printed media. However, the concept as a whole is pretty cool, but unfortunately I would be surprised if it ever takes off. What are your thoughts on it?
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