Not typewriters! What next, wax cylinders?!
The woes of the newspaper industry have been well documented -- subscriptions are declining as the aging readership literally dies out, and it's losing the battle with the Internet for the coveted, gnat-like attention spans of the 18-24 demographic. Granted, the demise of newspapers has been heralded long before the 90s, since news broadcasts were first heard on the radio, then on TV, but the media has a short memory.
In a brilliant strategic move for the minds and money of the young people who are potential customers and loyal readers, the Pittsburgh Trib published this scathing editorial that should have ran in 1982. And who says newspapers are out of touch with the rest of the population, huh?
"Innovation steamrolls old industry"
By Jack Markowitz
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Typewriters are gone. Carbon paper is gone. Teletype machines in newsrooms have chattered their last. Linotype operators ... well, maybe a handful still ply the trade in small print shops.
Way to grab those readers right off the bat by invoking a piece of equipment that hasn't been used in about 20 years. However, I understand the sentiment as I recently was bewailing the lack of hat blocking services on Main Street while taking my morning constitutional.
Not just typewriters but typewriter ribbons -- when was the last time you smudged your fingers trying to change one of those? Or used a fountain pen? Went to the "icebox?" Or put the wash through a wringer?
Um, probably no one has for about 60 years, if you really want a number.
And these were products of great American companies. And if the machines are no more, so is the maintenance. Typewriter and steam locomotive repair, highly skilled jobs, must be lost arts, except for hobbyists.
Yeah, because I don't know anyone who works in the fields that replaced these industries like IT departments and car mechanics.
In newspaper offices, soft-lead pencils and erasers, scissors and rubber-cement in jars with brushes all were tools of the editing trade. Now grammar is corrected on computer screens. Alongside pictures. Pictures in color. The great Speed Graphic cameras, their black-shielded film packs slapped in and out by photographers in a hurry, are antiques. Along with the film itself. And flash bulbs.
GASP. I bet I can't even find someone to repair my Phaeton these days!
And this just in the newspaper industry, where apprentices learned printing as boys. They thought it would see them and their grandsons past retirement. Grimy hands slapped galleys of type into lead forms, tightened it up, and rolled it through composing rooms to other machines and other crafts that have become memories.
The economist Joseph Schumpeter called all this "creative destruction" -- the way old industries and obsolete jobs get pushed aside by innovation. The destruction part is painful; the creative part aims always at cheaper and better.
There might be some debate about the direction of quality of life over the decades.
But -- automobiles, jet aircraft, computers, washing machines and banking machines, refrigerators, including the kind small enough for a student's dormitory, television sets and microwaves, not to mention medical and dental equipment -- in any long view, the proliferation of it all has changed the world. China and India are automobile growth markets! Yet the graves of no longer needed jobs and factories line the route of upward and onward like crosses along a pioneer trail.
"Pioneer trail"! He's regressing further! Next he'll be mourning the fur trapping industry.
Remember the Mimeograph? The adding machine? The former turned out fuzzy reproductions as ink oozed through a punched stencil. Bookkeepers punched keys and pulled levers to add columns of numbers. Both were great in their era. So was Morse's dots and dashes and Edison's stock ticker. But today's calculators, desktops and cell phones have crossed time warps of speed and efficiency.
Nowadays, a serious challenge is to keep manufacturing in the United States, but there's no stopping the "progress" that Schumpeter spotted. Products will be replaced, livelihoods made obsolete.
Politicians, teachers and opinion leaders need to pay attention. Americans shouldn't try to count on a government that's strapped right now for ideas and money. Better to start saving again on their own for the rainy days of creative destruction.
So, times will change, huh? I will pay attention, sir, and while I'm at it I guess I better stop hoping for that gig as the organ player at the silent movie house.
In a brilliant strategic move for the minds and money of the young people who are potential customers and loyal readers, the Pittsburgh Trib published this scathing editorial that should have ran in 1982. And who says newspapers are out of touch with the rest of the population, huh?
"Innovation steamrolls old industry"
By Jack Markowitz
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Typewriters are gone. Carbon paper is gone. Teletype machines in newsrooms have chattered their last. Linotype operators ... well, maybe a handful still ply the trade in small print shops.
Way to grab those readers right off the bat by invoking a piece of equipment that hasn't been used in about 20 years. However, I understand the sentiment as I recently was bewailing the lack of hat blocking services on Main Street while taking my morning constitutional.
Not just typewriters but typewriter ribbons -- when was the last time you smudged your fingers trying to change one of those? Or used a fountain pen? Went to the "icebox?" Or put the wash through a wringer?
Um, probably no one has for about 60 years, if you really want a number.
And these were products of great American companies. And if the machines are no more, so is the maintenance. Typewriter and steam locomotive repair, highly skilled jobs, must be lost arts, except for hobbyists.
Yeah, because I don't know anyone who works in the fields that replaced these industries like IT departments and car mechanics.
In newspaper offices, soft-lead pencils and erasers, scissors and rubber-cement in jars with brushes all were tools of the editing trade. Now grammar is corrected on computer screens. Alongside pictures. Pictures in color. The great Speed Graphic cameras, their black-shielded film packs slapped in and out by photographers in a hurry, are antiques. Along with the film itself. And flash bulbs.
GASP. I bet I can't even find someone to repair my Phaeton these days!
And this just in the newspaper industry, where apprentices learned printing as boys. They thought it would see them and their grandsons past retirement. Grimy hands slapped galleys of type into lead forms, tightened it up, and rolled it through composing rooms to other machines and other crafts that have become memories.
The economist Joseph Schumpeter called all this "creative destruction" -- the way old industries and obsolete jobs get pushed aside by innovation. The destruction part is painful; the creative part aims always at cheaper and better.
There might be some debate about the direction of quality of life over the decades.
But -- automobiles, jet aircraft, computers, washing machines and banking machines, refrigerators, including the kind small enough for a student's dormitory, television sets and microwaves, not to mention medical and dental equipment -- in any long view, the proliferation of it all has changed the world. China and India are automobile growth markets! Yet the graves of no longer needed jobs and factories line the route of upward and onward like crosses along a pioneer trail.
"Pioneer trail"! He's regressing further! Next he'll be mourning the fur trapping industry.
Remember the Mimeograph? The adding machine? The former turned out fuzzy reproductions as ink oozed through a punched stencil. Bookkeepers punched keys and pulled levers to add columns of numbers. Both were great in their era. So was Morse's dots and dashes and Edison's stock ticker. But today's calculators, desktops and cell phones have crossed time warps of speed and efficiency.
Nowadays, a serious challenge is to keep manufacturing in the United States, but there's no stopping the "progress" that Schumpeter spotted. Products will be replaced, livelihoods made obsolete.
Politicians, teachers and opinion leaders need to pay attention. Americans shouldn't try to count on a government that's strapped right now for ideas and money. Better to start saving again on their own for the rainy days of creative destruction.
So, times will change, huh? I will pay attention, sir, and while I'm at it I guess I better stop hoping for that gig as the organ player at the silent movie house.