From the Print Media to the Internet Part 1

From the Print Media to the Internet.

by Marie Lebert.

1. INTRODUCTION

The world of the print media is big: it includes everything related to books, periodicals and pictures. The world of the Internet is much bigger. It is that tremendous network which is leading to the upheaval of communications and working methods we are hearing so much about.

Are these two worlds antagonistic or complementary? What is the influence of one world on the other, and vice versa? How does the world of the print media accept this tremendous means of communication which is the Internet? How does the Internet take into account this centuries-old tool which is the print media? Do they work together? Do they compete? What is their common future? Will the world of the Internet completely swallow up the world of the print media, or, to the contrary, will the print media domesticate the Internet as an additional means of communication?

We are not even aware yet of the many interconnections and transformations the Internet is going to bring if the Internet changes the world as much as writing or printing did in the past, as we are constantly being told it will.

What are the implications for all the professionals of the print media: authors, booksellers, journalists, librarians, printers, publishers, translators, etc.?

How do they see the breaker which is beating down on them, and the storm that the Internet is bringing into their professional life? These are the questions I will try to answer in the following pages.

More and more publications have both an electronic version and a paper version and, in some cases, both can be ordered on-line. Numerous texts are available on-line in digital libraries. Many of these texts also have a paper version the cybernaut can buy if he prefers reading 500 pages lying on his sofa instead of reading them on the screen of his computer. Some texts or magazines are available on-line only.

More and more newspapers and magazines have a website on which their readers can find the full text or abstracts of the latest issue, archives giving access to the previous issues, dossiers on various topics, etc. More and more library catalogs are available on-line. And most sites offer hyperlinks to other websites or doc.u.ments on related subjects. In short, the Internet has become an essential tool for getting information, having access to doc.u.ments and broadening our knowledge.

I will examine the interaction of the print media and the Internet in the following areas: bookstores, publishers, press, libraries, digital libraries and catalogs. I shall also include the contributions of the media professionals who answered my inquiry about: (1) the way they see the relations.h.i.+p between the print media and the Internet; (2) what the use of the Internet has brought in their professional life and/or the life of their company/organization; and (3) how they see their professional future or the future in general with the Internet. I express here my warmest thanks to all those who replied to my inquiry.

I will also comment on the future trends regarding intellectual property, digitization, multimedia convergence and the information society. A selection of websites is also available. Some of the information included here is probably already obsolete. Never mind. The world of the Internet is fast-moving and evolves constantly - that is one of its many a.s.sets.

This study follows a Ph.D. I completed in 1998-99 at the University of the Sorbonne (Ecole pratique des hautes etudes), Paris, France. Although the key ideas are the same, it is not the translation of the French study, which was Francophone-oriented. New websites and new contributions from people belonging to the English-speaking and the international community have been included here.

Originally, I worked as a librarian in Europe and in the Middle East, under contract to set up libraries and/or computerize catalogs. More recently, I have been contributing to the preparation of publications as a writer, translator, editor or indexor. Since 1996 I have been working mainly for the International Labour Office (ILO), Geneva, Switzerland. As I am fascinated by languages, I also wrote a study about Multilingualism on the Web.

2. THE INTERNET

[In this chapter:]

[2.1. The Internet and the Other Media / 2.2. The "Info-Rich" and the "Info-Poor" / 2.3. The Web: First English, then Multilingual]

2.1. The Internet and the Other Media

Since a few years ago, the Internet has become integrated into our daily life, and people have gotten connected at home, at work or in their university. At the end of 1997, the number of Internet users was estimated at 90 or 100 million, with one million new users every month. In the year 2000, the number of Internet users will be over 300 million.

Does the Internet compete directly with television and reading? In Quebec, where 30.7% of the population is connected, a poll taken in March 1998 for the cybermagazine Branchez-vous! showed that 28.8% of connected Quebeckers were watching television less than before. Only 12.1% were reading less. As stated by the French Canadian magazine Multimedium in its article of April 2, 1998, it was "rather encouraging for the Ministry of Culture and Communications which has the double task of furthering the development of information highways... and reading!"

The Internet has become the medium of choice for many news consumers, in many cases matching and occasionally surpa.s.sing traditional forms of media, according to a survey conducted in February 1998 for MSNBC on the Internet by Market Facts.

In an article of Internet Wire, February, 1998, Merrill Brown, editor-in-chief of on-line MSNBC, wrote:

"The Internet news usage behavior pattern is shaping up similar to broadcast television in terms of weekday use, and is used more than cable television, newspapers and magazines during that same period of time. Additionally, on Sat.u.r.days, the Internet is used more than broadcast television, radio or newspapers, and on a weekly basis has nearly the same hours of use as newspapers."

The corresponding number of hours per week are: 2.4 hours for magazines; 3.5 hours for the Internet; 3.6 hours for newspapers; 4.5 hours for radio; 5 hours for cable TV; and 5.7 hours for broadcast TV.

When interviewed in Autumn 1997 by Francois Lemelin, chief editor of L'Alb.u.m, the official publication of the Club Macintosh de Quebec, Jean-Pierre Cloutier, editor of the Chroniques de Cyberie, explained:

"I think the medium [the Internet] is going to continue being essential, and then give birth to original, precise, specific services, bywhich time we will have found an economic model of viability. For information cybermedias like the Chroniques de Cyberie as well as for info-services, community and on-line public services, electronic commerce, distance learning, the post-modern policy which is going to change the elected representatives/princ.i.p.als, in fact, everything is coming around. [...]

Concerning the relations.h.i.+p with other media, I think we need to look backwards.

Contrary to the words of alarmists in previous times, radio didn't kill music or the entertainment industry any more than the cinema did. Television didn't kill radio or cinema. Nor did home videos. When a new medium arrives, it makes some room for itself, the others adjust, there is a transition period, then a 'convergence'.

What is different with the Internet is the interactive dimension of the medium and its possible impact. We are still thinking about that, we are watching to see what happens.

Also, as a medium, the Net allows the emergence of new concepts in the field of communication, and on the human level, too - even for non-connected people. I remember (yes, I am that old) when McLuhan arrived, at the end of the sixties, with his concept of 'global village' basing itself on television and telephone, and he was predicting data exchange between computers. There were people, in Africa, without television and telephone, who read and understood McLuhan. And McLuhan changed things in their vision of the world. The Internet has the same effect. It gives rise to some thinking on communication, private life, freedom of expression, the values we are attached to and those we are ready to get rid of, and it is this effect which makes it such a powerful, important medium."

The Web must not only give the necessary s.p.a.ce to all languages but it must also respect all cultures. During the Symposium on Multimedia Convergence organized by the International Labour Organization (ILO), Geneva, Switzerland, in January 1997, s.h.i.+nji Matsumoto, General Secretary of the Musicians' Union of j.a.pan (MUJ), declared:

"It is not only in developing countries, but in advanced countries as well that we need to maintain our traditions. j.a.pan is quite receptive to foreign culture and foreign technology. [...] Foreign culture is pouring into j.a.pan and, in fact, the domestic market is being dominated by foreign products. Despite this, when it comes to preserving and further developing j.a.panese culture, there has been insufficient support from the Government. [...] With the development of information networks, the earth is getting smaller and it is wonderful to be able to make cultural exchanges across vast distances and to deepen mutual understanding among people. We have to remember to respect national cultures and social systems."

The Technorealism website first appeared on the Web on March 12, 1998. According to the website, technorealism is "an attempt to a.s.sess the social and political implications of technologies so that we might all have more control over the shape of our future. The heart of the technorealist approach involves a continuous critical examination of how technologies - whether cutting-edge or mundane - might help or hinder us in the struggle to improve the quality of our personal lives, our communities, and our economic, social, and political structures."

The eight principles of Technorealism Overview have been signed by over 1,472 people between March 12 and August 20, 1998. Here are the first three:

"a) Technologies are not neutral.

A great misconception of our time is the idea that technologies are completely free of bias - that because they are inanimate artifacts, they don't promote certain kinds of behaviors over others. In truth, technologies come loaded with both intended and unintended social, political, and economic leanings. Every tool provides its users with a particular manner of seeing the world and specific ways of interacting with others. It is important for each of us to consider the biases of various technologies and to seek out those that reflect our values and aspirations.

b) The Internet is revolutionary, but not Utopian.

The Net is an extraordinary communications tool that provides a range of new opportunities for people, communities, businesses, and government. Yet as cybers.p.a.ce becomes more populated, it increasingly resembles society at large, in all its complexity. For every empowering or enlightening aspect of the wired life, there will also be dimensions that are malicious, perverse, or rather ordinary.

c) Government has an important role to play on the electronic frontier.

Contrary to some claims, cybers.p.a.ce is not formally a place or jurisdiction separate from Earth. While governments should respect the rules and customs that have arisen in cybers.p.a.ce, and should not stifle this new world with inefficient regulation or censors.h.i.+p, it is foolish to say that the public has no sovereignty over what an errant citizen or fraudulent corporation does on-line.

As the representative of the people and the guardian of democratic values, the state has the right and responsibility to help integrate cybers.p.a.ce and conventional society.

Technology standards and privacy issues, for example, are too important to be entrusted to the marketplace alone. Competing software firms have little interest in preserving the open standards that are essential to a fully functioning interactive network. Markets encourage innovation, but they do not necessarily insure the public interest."

2.2. The "Info-Rich" and the "Info-Poor"

There is a close correlation between economic and social development and access to telecommunications. Access to new communication technologies expands much more rapidly in the North than in the South, and there are many more web servers in North America and in Europe than on the other continents. Two-thirds of the Internet users live in the United States, where 40% of households are equipped with a computer, a percentage that we also find in Denmark, Switzerland and Netherlands. The percentage is 30% in Germany, 25% in United Kingdom, and 20% for most industrialized countries.

The statistics of March 1998 on the percentage of connections per number of inhabitants, available in the Computer Industry Almanach (CIA), a reference doc.u.ment on the evolution of cybers.p.a.ce, show that Finland is the most connected country in the world with 25% of its population connected, followed by Norway (23%) and Iceland (22.7%). The United States is in fourth place with 20%. Eleven countries in the world have a proportion of Internet users above 10%, and Switzerland is eleventh, with 10.7%.

Regarding the global percentage, the statistics of end 1997 of the Computer Industry Almanach - which take into consideration the connections at home, at work and in academic inst.i.tutions - show that the United States is still considerably ahead with 54.68% of the global percentage, followed by j.a.pan (7.97%), the United Kingdom (5.83%) and Canada (4.33%). The survey also shows that the US lead is constantly decreasing - it went from 80% in 1991 to less than 65% in 1994, with prospects of 50% in 1998 and less than 40% in 2000.

Nevertheless, if we consider the whole planet, universal access to information highways is far from the reality. Regarding basic telephony, teledensity varies from more than 60 phone lines per 100 inhabitants in the richest countries to less than one in the poorest countries. Fifty per cent of phone lines in the world are in northern America and western Europe. Half of the world's population has never used a phone.

In the developing countries, it is unlikely that Internet connections will use traditional phone lines, as there are other technological solutions. The developing countries' equipment rate for digital lines is equivalent to the rate of industrialized countries. The growth in mobile telephony is also spectacular.