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What happened to printing?

 

The availability of this additional capacity is encouraging several other developments including interactivity and social networking and the migration of books newspapers and other text media to on-screen rather than on-paper consumption. Just as newspapers were transformed by the availability of photography; and the first magazines evolved to the present colourful media; so the availability of a much richer user experience, and potential for knowledge transfer,  is likely to make newspapers and magazines more like television news; with video and sound in place of static images and quotations or reportage in text.  

Electronic book sales are already exhibiting exponential growth, albeit off a low base. These permit book readers to share passages with others, to find the meaning and derivation of a word or look up a reference in the course of reading a book.  New book are quickly downloaded and tens of thousands of books, including most the classics, are already freely available.  The popular readers are lighter and less cumbersome than most books.  A single device can replace a dozen entire libraries.  The advantages are so profound that a printed book; except those valuable in their own right as collected objects; or so esoteric that they have not been scanned; may soon be as rare as a typewriter or as the music CD is about to become.

New authors and the copyright holders of books still protected will receive royalty payments from an international hosting service/publishing house that mediates and charges for downloads of their book from the Cloud.  A number of the more conservative publishers will resist the demise of traditional printing and will not survive these changes.

Superseding the printed page requires a portable electronic device (pad, tablet, book, phone, laptop, e-paper) that can be connected, typically by radio, to the content provider.  The Internet, together with the cellular phone network provides this means. 

 

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Travel

Burma (Myanmar)

 

This is a fascinating country in all sorts of ways and seems to be most popular with European and Japanese tourists, some Australians of course, but they are everywhere.

Since childhood Burma has been a romantic and exotic place for me.  It was impossible to grow up in the Australia of the 1950’s and not be familiar with that great Australian bass-baritone Peter Dawson’s rendition of Rudyard Kipling’s 'On the Road to Mandalay' recorded two decades or so earlier:  

Come you back to Mandalay
Where the old flotilla lay
Can't you hear their paddles chunking
From Rangoon to Mandalay

On the road to Mandalay
Where the flying fishes play
And the Dawn comes up like thunder
out of China 'cross the bay

The song went Worldwide in 1958 when Frank Sinatra covered it with a jazz orchestration, and ‘a Burma girl’ got changed to ‘a Burma broad’; ‘a man’ to ‘a cat’; and ‘temple bells’ to ‘crazy bells’.  

Read more: Burma (Myanmar)

Fiction, Recollections & News

A Discourse on History

 

 

 

On Australia Day 2011 again we hear the calls: Change the Flag; become a Republic; reparations for the White Invasion...

There are strong arguments for progress in each of these areas but as the following article discusses we first need to ensure that the changes that must be made are indeed progress; that we don't sacrifice that which has been achieved already.

Read more: A Discourse on History

Opinions and Philosophy

Tragedy in Norway

 

 

The extraordinary tragedy in Norway points yet again to the dangers of extremism in any religion. 

I find it hard to comprehend that anyone can hold their religious beliefs so strongly that they are driven to carefully plan then systematically kill others.  Yet it seems to happen all to often.

The Norwegian murderer, Anders Behring Breivik, reportedly quotes Sydney's Cardinal Pell, John Howard and Peter Costello in his manifesto.   Breivik apparently sees himself as a Christian Knight on a renewed Crusade to stem the influx of Muslims to Europe; and to Norway in particular.

Read more: Tragedy in Norway

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