Last updated: Sep 19, 2007
Summary
This section could easily have been titled "Software and Hardware," except that I believe that hardware has a very different influence on the future of publishing than does software. Clearly the Apple iPod, iPhone and their offspring, as well as many nascent hardware technologies, will have a tremendous influence on the future of publishing. But software deserves to be visited separately. Whether its impact is greater or lesser than the burgeoning developments in hardware is worthy of much debate. Both are progressing at a breathtaking pace, and influencing publishing in extraordinary ways. (Check the section on "Computer Hardware" for more in-depth coverage of that subject.)Examining software in the context of the future of publishing is an enormous challenge. We can start small: an examination of the latest version of QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign. We can then broaden the context and look at the technologies surrounding digital asset management and content management. But we must go further, and look at the infrastructural changes in software-based technologies, largely built on XML, that now appear certain to assert the greatest impact on where publishing is headed. Why Software Matters to the Future of Publishing
- The extraordinary changes in the publishing industry are founded on software changes more than any other development. As much as I stress the sociological developments amongst the younger generation, and its willingness to adopt media change, none of this would mean a thing if the software was not first developed that enabled the change. We start with software and move forward from there.
- While trying to understand the changes in the future of publishing we tend to focus on the "meta-changes" - social media, for example. It's too easy to forget that millions of print pages are being generated daily worldwide by QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign (and related software), and that the new versions of these products are having a more subtle, but perhaps equally profound impact on where publishing is headed
- XML is slowly changing the equation for all forms of publishing: Web, print, mobile - everything. XML and its surrounding software technologies are enormously challenging for most publishers to grasp, yet they are the foundation on which so much of the current change is based.
- The pace of development is software (as in hardware) is, in anything, increasing, making it hugely challenging for publishing practitioners to factor in these developments into their assessments of where publishing is headed.
Much more to follow...