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(KR Information Design Lab[br]The Tablet Newspaper: A vision for the Future[br]© Copyright 1994 Knight-Ridder, Inc)[br][Printing noise]

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[Off voice, female] For more than 500 years, ink printed on paper has been the best medium

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for delivering written information.

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But as the world becomes increasingly digital, all that is changing.

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Here, at the Knight-Ridder information design lab in Boulder, Colorado,

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a team of journalists, designers, technologists and researchers

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is putting together the tools that will take today's newspaper into the electronic age.

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[Roger Fiddler] We will have the interactive graphic now.

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So, when you click on the graphical animate on the front page, or you click on the story (?)

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[off voice] Roger Fiddler established the lab for Knight-Ridder in the Fall of 1992.

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Today, he serves as its director.

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[Fiddler] All human communication systems are undergoing a transformation --

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from one form to another.

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And that's all being brought about by emergent technologies and by cultural changes.

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Now, several years ago, I coined the word "mediamorphosis" to describe this transformation.

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Newspapers are certainly going through that now,

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but all forms of media that we know today will be transformed over the next 10, 15 years.

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[off voice, male] The transforming inventions are of course the computer and digital telecommunications,

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We're finding that our capacity to be able to process and deliver information

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through information superhighways and computer systems,

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are increasing in efficiency and they're resulting in reduced costs for publishing.

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I do believe that for the first time, we're going to begin seeing an alternative to ink on paper.

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It may be difficult to conceptualize, the idea of digital paper,

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but in fact, we believe that that's what's going to happen.

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[Fiddler] Ideal is (? 1:54) is a media think-tank:

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we bring people to the lab to give us more insights into the developments of technologies

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and particularly, digital technologies and digital communication.

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Our role is to investigate the opportunities that may be there for newspaper companies

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over the next few years

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and to also try to develop a long-range vision of where the newspaper industry is headed

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over the next 5, 10, 20 years.

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[Off voice, female] An important part of this evolution is the emergence of the electronic tablet.

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This device is under development at consumer electronic companies around the world.

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Tablets will be a whole new class of computers.

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They'll weigh under two pounds.

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They'll be totally portable.

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They'll have a clarity of screen display comparable to ink on paper.

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They'll be able to blend text, video, audio and graphics together.

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And they'll be part of our daily lives around the turn of this century.

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We may still use computers to create information,

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but we'll use the tablet to interact with information: reading, watching, listening.

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[Fiddler] Our goal here, at the Information Design Lab,

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is to develop the appropriate interfaces and appropriate technologies,

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so that when we actually do produce electronic editions of newspapers for these tablets,

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that we could hand it to you and you would immediately know how to use the .....

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because it looks familiar to you.

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In fact, what we are doing is building a bridge of familiarity.

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When we talk about human communication systems, what we discover throughout history

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is that they have evolved and new forms tend to take on many of the characteristics of older forms

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for some period of time.

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Over time, of course, they do evolve and take on their own characteristics.

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I believe the same thing will happen in our transition

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from ink on paper to digital forms of newspapers and magazines and books.

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But in the beginning, they will retain many of the familiar characteristics of print products today.

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And I think that's absolutely essential.

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We don't want to have to issue people manuals to read their newspaper.

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You already know how to read a newspaper, you know how to turn pages, pull out a section,

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find things that are interesting to you.

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We can enhance that with electronic technology and make it much more useful

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and add value to it.

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But we believe we have to build a bridge of familiarity first,

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to get us from the ink on paper product into the digital world. (4:28)