Tyler Tate

The invention of the printing press transformed the physical object that is the book from an artefact of human transcription to that of mass production. By 1500, just 40 years after Gutenberg’s invention, an estimated 150 to 200 million copies had rolled off the press; a century later, the by then pervasive technology led to the rise of a new medium: the newspaper. This was the era of information as physical object.

More recently, mass adoption of the world wide web and the plethora of Internet-connected devices has led to digital information augmenting and, to a certain degree, displacing the physical. News was consumed online rather than on paper, new mediums of self expression arose from the blog to the social networks, and a new pair of shoes could be acquired without ever stepping foot in a store.

We are now on the cusp of yet another technological sea change. The pendulum which swung from physical to digital is swinging back to the real world, but this time, information is formless, contextual, and ubiquitous. In their book Pervasive Information Architecture, Andrea Resmini and Luca Rosati describe this brave new world of ubiquitous computing:

“Information is going everywhere. It is bleeding out of the Internet and out of personal computers, and it is being embedded into the real world. Mobile devices, networked resources, and real-time information systems are making our interactions with information constant and ubiquitous. Information is becoming pervasive.”

The future lies in cross-channel experiences. Interactions in which the technology fades to the background and the personal, physical, and social context of the present mediate the devices and methods with which we interact with information.

You know the Hemingway line, “Write all the story, take out all the good lines, and see if it still works”? Well, I’m posting these simple thoughts here because I just deleted them from a longer piece, but still wanted them to see the light of day.