Yesterday, amongst much fuss and media attention, Rupert Murdoch and his staff at News International launched The Daily, the hyped electronic newspaper available only on iPad. Putting aside the fact that Murdoch carried his Apple device onto the stage like it were a rancid sock (he really doesn't like this technology stuff, does he?) the whole concept of an electronic newspaper seems deeply flawed.
New technology in the past has led to the reshaping of old and feet-finding for the new. When the automobile first emerged it was, literally, as the horseless carriage. It took a while for the enclosed car to emerge as a form, and also the repositioning of horses to take place (as a leisure pursuit for girls called Tabitha).
Similarly the emergence of television at first saw struggles to work out how to use the medium, but we learned over time the language of tv (news, sitcoms, gameshows, and so on) whilst particularly cinema refocused onto feature films and away from b movies and newsreel.
An electronic newspaper? It's a horseless carriage for the 21st century. Except we have already had first cd roms and then the internet! In a networked electronic world, the idea of an edition is crazy when news happens real time. And the idea of paying for news content is even crazier.
From the outset, iPad had felt to me like the output of a focus group of Apple and print publishers trying to brainstorm their way out of what had happened in the music industry. I'll probably be terribly wrong, but my hunch is that we will look back at The Daily in the same way that we look back ast the very first cars… Like objects whose creators were totally stuck in the old ways of the world.
mmitII 