A paperless publishing industry has been creeping up on us for a while, trailing along behind the growing might of the internet. Like eating a chocolate bar everyday, putting on your jeans at the end of the month to discover they don’t fit, we might be finding ourselves at the stage where technology has out grown the printed word.

The internet is undoubtedly the greatest invention of our time, connecting people all over the world in a free flow of ideas and information. Our initial amazement at the World Wide Web’s offerings has morphed into recognising free information as a human right…and maybe we’re not wrong; all people deserve the truth about what’s happening in the world, regardless of their finances. You can’t help thinking newspapers have shot themselves in the foot however, putting their content online and then expecting people to buy a paper version. Of course their sales are going to go down! With the web changing every second, a daily paper is old news by the time it’s printed and if they now try to charge online they will merely send their readership to pastures new. If there’s one thing the internet has taught us, it’s that people like to share. Who knew cold, hard technology could be so heart warming?

But reading from technology is still cold and hard. There is no substitute for holding a beautifully printed book or magazine in your hands, the smell of it and the weight of knowledge as you turn a page feeling that you’ve achieved something. Is it just me that likes to tilt a book up to see how much I’ve read; to see the time I’ve invested in the plot so far, quantified in the space between my fingers and thumb? I don’t think Amazon’s Kindle and its eBooks are going to tempt me into a clinical age. With diminishing rainforests approaching I might be convinced, but out of necessity not desire.

With reading in mind, there’s no question that a magazine or newspaper’s design is worlds apart from its younger sibling, the website, which is limited with its one long webpage of scrolling text. As with all sibling rivalries, both sides have their strengths and the interactive website comes with video and links taking you on a never-ending expansive journey. You might ask, as my Mum used to say to me and my brothers when she caught us ready to use the remote control as a weapon; “Why can’t you all just get along?” and the good news is they can.

Apple’s recently launched iPad (the one that looks like a giant iPhone) lends itself to apps that have incestuously combined a newspaper/magazine’s design and a website’s interaction. Unlike the Kindle, which is designed for unillustrated text, the iPad tries to give you the whole magazine experience but if my finances are anything to go by, it’s unlikely that people have got over £300 to spend on reading a magazine or newspaper.

When it comes to technology and the printed word living in harmony, the website and the magazine are doing quite nicely already: The website for video, digesting chunks of information and one-off articles and the transportable magazine for your reading and visual pleasure, curled up on the sofa or taking you through a boring train journey. As long as both digital and physical options continue to exist then we’ll be happy customers. However, with magazine, newspaper and book sales diminishing, they are all in danger of being eclipsed by the internet. It’s hard to imagine that the bright lights of technology will completely replace reading a good old-fashioned book, something your unstrained eyes will surely thank you for, but if sales continue to fall, the printing process will become increasingly more expensive until we’re left with a hard-drive library and a bill from our opticians. Heed my warning, if you want the printed word to be a balanced part of your future, you better start buying it now, otherwise you might find that you don’t have a choice. Let’s just hope that if the paperless revolution is triumphant, we still have some retinas left to admire the rainforests we have saved.

Kathryn Evans

Suit Yourself Magazine publishes all its old issues online for people to read for free, they have been running an exclusive online-only monthly magazine, SY On The Sly, for over a year now, previewing and reviewing everything that’s going on in Bristol, and there is also a comprehensive blog where every article and review written by people involved in the mag is blogged.