Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!MICA.BERKELEY.EDU!bowles
From: bowles@MICA.BERKELEY.EDU (Jeff A. Bowles)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re:  Electronic Newspapers
Message-ID: <8905031352.AA16555@mica.berkeley.edu>
Date: 3 May 89 13:52:24 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 49


	From: zifrony%TAURUS.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
	Subject: Electronic Newspapers


	Some of you have been very keen on electronic newspapers.  This
	media has its advantages, especially to those equiped with
	high-res graphic equipment.  However, from my humble
	experience, our generation is still used to read things printed
	on paper.  I feel much more comfortable reading printed things
	than reading from a computer terminal.  This is especially so
	for long articles (more than 1-2 terminal screens <20-40
	lines>).

Sure, if you're reading at 1200 baud. You're right that this 9x15 dot matrix
that makes my current CRT typeface isn't as readable as what the NY Times
uses, and that the layout makes all the difference. Find a very old newspaper
and look at it carefully: even if it's printed, the layout can make it
unreadable.

	2. You grasp larger areas of the article (or of the newspaper), when
	   you have it printed.  This is something lacking in computer
	   terminals, though it might be better with the 19" workstations.

Again, this is presentation, not medium. For example, if a newspaper were
given to me on a display that looks like a Mac screen (say), and each article
were a separate "file" and each section ("Home", "Comics", "Business",
"Sports", "Index") were a folder, I could come close to the organization of
a current newspaper.

Would I want to? Perhaps not. Think about it: things like "netnews" will
give you an index or will give you the "next" article. Two choices. (How
many of you open a newspaper to the index?) 

	So, to conclude, I think electronic newspapers can catch on with the
	people having access to printers, used to print some of the material
	to be read.

Nope. I consider the old NY Times articles I find [for reference] in the
public library to be quite readable, thank you, although they're on microfilm.
Staring at a tube, be it a TV, a microfilm/fiche reader, or high-res monitor,
seems no harder than looking at a newspaper. And I can run "grep" on it, if
it's in ASCII.

If forced to look at the world through a 24x80 CRT screen, perhaps I might
agree with you. But don't limit "what can be done" with "what seems impossible
given current equipment".

	Jeff