Exit Strategy
Written byJeffrey Veen. 1 comment
About Jeffrey Veen
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Jeffrey Veen is one of the founding partners of Adaptive Path and project lead for Measure Map, the well-received web analytics tool acquired by Google in 2006. After five years with Adaptive Path, Jeff moved on to Google, where he lead the redesign of their Analytics product and managed their web apps UX team. He left Google in May, 2008, to work on personal projects.
Jeffrey Veen waxes eloquent on why a printed magazine may work in this age of the digital.
You may be thinking just what I was thinking before writing this: Why print a magazine about the Web? It’s 2008. Aren’t we a bit past ink-on-paper publishing? Especially in our industry! Well, yes and no. True, the web has grown to global and near-ubiquitous lengths. Instant distribution, aggregation of content, and clever algorithms conspire to help us sort through the glut of information we face daily. Why, then, take the time and expense to create the magazine you now hold?
To answer that, we can look at how history has accepted new technology and replaced old. It tends to happen abruptly and create revolutions — at least to the people embracing the change. Whether it’s electricity, horseless carriages, or our ever-increasing means of communication; new tech makes existing products more focused and gives us the opportunity to romanticize them. For example, when television took over drama and comedy, radio refocused on programming consumed on the move. Electric lights changed candles from necessity to atmosphere.
So what has the digital web done to print? Pragmatically, it has concentrated print on the places we can’t (or don’t) have connected devices — newspapers on the subway and books on the nightstand. It also serves as means for those who aren’t yet connected, but only for the moment. But to wax romantic, I think printed material will continue to exist as physical milestones of passing time. When I see the years of brightly-colored Wired Magazine on my shelf, I recall a connection to the insanity of the Dot Com Boom. “Perl in a Nutshell” is more easily searched online, but the dogeared pages reflect a time of exciting possibilities.
Far more effective than an expired RSS feed, this magazine may serve as a marker — embodying a time and a place, the way we thought, the things we were wrong about, and our hopes for the future.
But then again, I just may be nostalgic…
Written bymartinjy on the 13th of January
Nostalgia and soul are back, baby.