Fresh print links

Here comes our weekly batch of links pertinent to printing.

The first couple of links are about the Internet and print:

• The Frankfurt Book Fair (@book_fair) ended last week and not with a whimper but with a bang. Jaron Lanier received the Peace price of the German Book Trade and delivered a speech worthy of your attention: High tech peace will need a new kind of humanism. Print it out and read it over the weekend - it is long and none too pleasant.
• Also in Germany the epic conflict between Google and certain publishers is heating up. Google announced to stop serving snippets from those publishers who sued them.
• Meanwhile, the Financial Time's Gillian Tett (@gilliantett) explains the recently relaunch of the FT as a reorientation towards the digital age: "Obviously we’re facing a marketplace where there is an evolution from print to digital for many of our readers, but not all of our readers."
• Finally, read @drupa's "The Impact of the Internet on Print". The news are mixed - at best. But in summarizing the reports concludes: "Printers just need to believe in the reality of a multi-channel digital future, change their mind-set and invest accordingly."
• Another issue that is not going away it the controversy on print vs screen. Daniel Dejan (@danielatSappi) argues that "Reading ink on paper is a multi-sensory experience". We don't deny that and do emphasize that reading a printed book can be an intense pleasure indeed! But this is a mere function of the content. To quote Jaron Lanier from the link above: "Books are a high stakes game, perhaps not in terms of money (compared with other industries), but in terms of effort, commitment, attention, the allocation of our short human lives, and our potential to influence the future in a positive way. Being an author forces one into a humanizing form of vulnerability. The book is an architecture of human dignity." Such a book deserves printing to unleash its full multi-sensory experience. Other content does not:
• We found the following link in the @guardian. The nice infographic helps you deciding whether to print or not (and sure: We made a printout!).
• Smallbusinesscomputing (@SmBizComputing) reports on a Infotrends (@infoTrends) study claiming that a 500-person company looses 4.333 hours a year for trips to the printer. The rationale behind this is to promote small desktop printers as replacements for centralized multifunction printers. We dont buy this. Do not regard those hours as lost but think of them in terms of time spend walking instead of sitting. Sitting is the new smoking! Indeed, this is what our health care provider advocates: Centralize printers, and waste baskets and the like. Health benefits will surely outbalance those hours lost to business.
• Enough with ink on the paper because there is so much more you can do with paper. See this  for a variety of examples like building cheap and durable refugee camps or even cathedrals from paper. This came via @architectmag.

Finally here is video via @inkondapaper showing how to use the silkscreen method to produce ultra thin electronics:

Enjoy your weekend!