Electronic Publishing

Electronic publishing is a central feature of the information age. It can involve converting the content of paper media to electronic form and/or inventing new forms of publishing.

Electronic publishing emerged when print media began migrating to electronic digital formats. While [Page 174]some formats were parallel versions of earlier forms, such as books going onto CD-ROM, or motion pictures transferring to video and later to DVD, added features led to a “paper-plus” version of earlier media, when printed newspapers and magazines grew Web sites. With the birth of the World Wide Web, electronic publishing soon came to encompass more than just individual works. Huge collections of artifacts became available in the form of archives, electronic libraries, and other resources. Some are now worldwide resources, available on the Web to any connected computer, while others are local or private repositories comparable to closed research libraries.

The migration to digital media had an astonishing effect on the scale of publishing, for the addition of digital variants means a vast multiplication of accessible information. Another effect is a new manipulability of information. Searches across wide ranges of information have become possible in more comprehensive ways than ever before. The cost of accessing and searching this increasing pool of information resources shrinks continually, and the time required for any search has also decreased, despite the growth of available information.

A third effect was partially predictable, but few people fully understood its power: the fact that all information in electronic digital media is carried in the same form—digital code. While media outputs and transmission methods vary dramatically in operation and look and feel, all electronic publishing is done using the same basic medium: coded software. For the first time in human history, Marshall McLuhan's observation that “the medium is the message” is literally true. The power of this third effect lies in its bestowal of any number of forms and outputs on any kind of content.

One simple fact makes the protean and changeable nature of electronic publishing clear: The computer is not a medium in the original sense of the word. The computer is a device that uses software to emulate the performance and characteristics of many kinds of media. Any computer is, in theory and practice, a multitude of machines that can be used for any purpose that can be programmed.

Hidden behind the visible and powerful face of electronic publishing is a less visible and more powerful phenomenon. Three factors give it meaning, and point to a form of publishing never before possible. The first factor is media convergence. The second is the use of information technology to control an increasing number of the world's important operating systems. The third factor is the connection of the planet's computing systems to an invisible datasphere far larger and more powerful than the visible interface of the Web.

Electronic publishing can, in theory, involve any content distributed by electronic media or any program that electronic media can execute. The nature and variety of digital electronic media give astonishing power and diversity to the meaning of what it is to publish, and change the nature of what can be published. In a world increasingly powered by converging technologies, this means that electronic publishing encompasses a wide range of possibilities.

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