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Wilson Quarterly: Is Print Dead?
October 7, 2009With newspapers and venerable magazines such as Gourmet closing up shop, and book publishers racing to get the latest Dan Brown thriller out in digital form, the printed word is under unprecedented assault. The battle is not just a duel among businesses and technologies -- what's being decided is the future of how we think and how we perceive the world. In the Autumn 2009 Wilson Quarterly, Christine Rosen, a New Atlantis editor, argues that the information cornucopia "has not made us better readers or more empathetic human beings," but economist Tyler Cowen counters that it allows us to "assemble culture for ourselves," filling our lives with "beauty, suspense, and learning." Digital media analyst Alex Wright contends that books, "capable of flowing into any number of vessels -- paper, Web browsers, eBooks, iPhones," will retain their intellectual edge over the "digital dross." Full release.