sardonick

I have been thinking about differences in media, specifically differences in the way we value them.

Everything about a book says “I value this”. An author will invest more time/effort writing a book than a magazine article or a newspaper column. Books are made of better materials, expected to be kept around the house for years and passed on to the grandkids eventaully. Likewise I pay more for a book. While books might be about current events, the majority are meant to be more timeless. I am less tolerant of typographic/layout errors in books than in other media.

Magazines are a midpoint between books and newspapers. They’re printed on material that will last a relatively long while–but no one keeps them around for more than a couple months. I expect good, artistic layout from magazines. With a few exceptions, they’re printed to be consumed, enjoyed once or twice, and discarded. They are relatively timely.

Newspapers? The only reason I keep a typical newspaper for more than a day is because I forget to throw it out. They are the timeliest of information, so much that they’re up-to-date and out-of-date very quickly. The production cycle of newspapers versus books is an interesting contrast seen in this light.

Of course, all this is yesterday’s news. What really has me thinking about things is what the web is doing to all this. Long web page or little blog post, wikipedia or mefi entry… All the traditional factors that we use to gauge value are being remapped. Advertisements are in the long as well as the short. Likewise constraints are being tweaked. We throw out newspapers because they’re of little use–but would we keep magazines around if we had all the space in the world? How do we choose what to keep and what to discard in this new world? Media: the long, medium, and short can all blur and co-exist. Bandwidth is so cheap there’s no difference in production cost.

More thoughts on this when I’m less sleepy.