How the Internet Has Affected the Print Industry
From carved clay tablets to papyrus scrolls and moveable type to film typesetting, the history of the print industry has been one of constancy punctuated by sudden, drastic changes. However, the speed and scale of these many changes has been eclipsed by the arrival of word processing on desktop computers and the emergence of the Internet, leading to an information age without parallel in our history.
Back in the 1960s, there were many pessimists in the print industry who claimed that, with increased viewing of television, there would be very few books printed in the near future. In fact, they were only partly correct. Today, print is the third largest industry in the US as well as being a major industry worldwide, with more titles produced year on year than ever before. And although television viewing and channel choice have also grown dramatically, there is only one part of the modern TV set that directly impacts on the printing industry: the screen.