From Howard Owens comes a link to a hilarious post by Amy Gahran at the Poynter Online site (where she edits the E-Media Tidbits feature). In it, she tries to describe this new information-delivery technology called a “news-paper” to her skeptical husband:
“Check it out,” I said, “It’s a different kind of news delivery technology. It’s called a news-paper.”
“How does it work?” he asked.
“They have giant printers in Denver that print up thousands of these every day with news that was current as of something called ‘press time,’ and then they truck them out to towns, divide the truckloads into cars, and drop them on subscribers’ doorstep.
“You paid for this?…” he frowned, shaking his head. “How do you search it?”
“It’s not really searchable, but it’s scannable. See, you can open up the pages wide and see lots of stories.”
“Looks like mostly ads.”
Hilarious. And yet, kind of sobering too. At least by the end, Amy’s husband grudgingly admits that “at least the screen resolution is decent.”