Designer extraordinaire Jason Santa Maria argues that while the death of the word printed on paper is exaggerated, the days of its “spot atop the mountain of mainstream content distribution is in its final days”, but sees the silver lining the this could “bring about a rebirth of design innovation online”.

Meanwhile, New Yorker columnist, and author of the highly successful “Wisdom of the Crowds” James Surowiecki considers the issue in detail in this weeks “The Financial Page”.

Surowiecki concludes

For a while now, readers have had the best of both worlds: all the benefits of the old, high-profit regime—intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on—and the low costs of the new one. But that situation can’t last. Soon enough, we’re going to start getting what we pay for, and we may find out just how little that is.

It’s clear there is a demand for quality writing, and it’s also clear that the experience of reading from the printed page is a far more pleasurable experience than reading from the screen in many circumstances, and will be for many years to come. But are people willing to pay in sufficient numbers for that? Well, at least we hope so.

to help bring more magazine archives and current magazines online, partnering with publishers to begin digitizing millions of articles from titles as diverse as New York Magazine, Popular Mechanics, and Ebony

This is wonderful news, and will go a long way toward helping the survival of important cultural productions for the future.

From the article

One could imagine the book, venerable as it is, just vanishing into the ether. It melts into all the other information species searchable through Google’s most democratic of engines: the Web pages, the blogs, the organs of printed and broadcast news, the general chatter. (Thanks for everything, Gutenberg, and now goodbye.)

But I don’t see it that way. I think, on the contrary, we’ve reached a shining moment for this ancient technology. Publishers may or may not figure out how to make money again (it was never a good way to get rich), but their product has a chance for new life: as a physical object, and as an idea, and as a set of literary forms.

and may favorite bit

Go back to an old-fashioned idea: that a book, printed in ink on durable paper, acid-free for longevity, is a thing of beauty. Make it as well as you can. People want to cherish it.

Clearly, having only just started a print magazine ourselves, we tend to agree with his thesis. Well worth reading.

For today (Monday December 1st) only, register for the conference, and we’ll give you either

• a half day workshop of your choice or
• a day’s skiing or boarding at Breckenridge (return coach and lift tickets either February 6 or 7)

All you have to do is register today (no need to pay right away either). Register for the extra workshop you want along with the conference and any other workshops you want to attend, and we’ll deduct the price of the workshop from your invoice before you pay it.

If you’ve already signed up, no need to worry - if you register for a half day workshop today, we’ll offer you another half day workshop, or a day at Breckenridge as well.

And we look forward to seeing you in Denver in February.

We’ve recently announced our latest conference, Web Directions North, to be held in Denver in the first week of February, and featuring an amazing line up of practitioners (not just talking heads) speaking about things like website performance, web design, ajax, offline web applications, mobile web design and development, and much much more, with a who’s who of speakers, like Dan Cederholm, Brad Neuberg, Rachel Hinman, Nicole Sullivan-Haas, nearly 30 in total.

One goal of our conferences is to make them accessible as possible in terms of pricing - our rule of thumb is “less than the price of a cup of coffee each working day”. Thus year, we’ve kept the pricing the same as last year, at $795 (that includes taxes, as well as catering, receptions, parties, as well as two absolutely solid days of presentations)

But, to thank all those who’ve shown their interest in Scroll, we’re taking another $50 off this, for the next two weeks, if you book with the promotional code WDN09SM.

And, we’ll even send you a copy of the first edition of Scroll as well (well, until they run out)!

The offer is good until midnight of Friday the 22nd of November.

So, if you want to hear about the latest real world developments in web design and development practice, sign up for Web Direction in the next week or so, and we’ll see you in Denver in February.

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We initially printed Scroll for the attendees at Web Directions South, but also printed a small additional number. These are available on a first come, best dressed basis.

Don’t delay, interest in the first editions seems very strong, and the number really is limited. We wont be printing any more of this edition (it will however be available via MagCloud).