I don't have a position on paper per se. Wonderful material. Love the printed effect and the graphic interface. Taught me all I need to know. Grew up reading from it.
But as I've become more and more digital, my reliance on moist cellulose fibers pressed together, is falling away.
I still read of course but I am so web dependent that most of what I read is online through the wonders of RSS and other syndication feeds.
I don't buy a daily newspaper to read. I subscribe to several online. So at my desk or mobile device I browse:
The Australian, The Courier Mail, The Sydney Morning Herald, Green Left Weekly, The Brisbane Times, The Queensland Times, The Suncoast Daily, The Gympie Times, The Caboolture Herald, A Jazeera, The Gympie Times, ABC news, LabourStart...etc
I also subscribe to many audio feeds and can selectively listen in my own time to any number of programs news, views and otherwise. On top of that are my selections of video resources -- all syndicated to me which I can browse and select from before downloading the content.. Then there are the news tips I pick up on Facebook or from the egroups I subscribe to.
So I am newsed up without a newspaper to my name.
In fact when you add the blogs and sundry other subscriptions I indulge in on my Google Reader -- and at the moment I subscribe to just under 500 'feeds' -- I'm in information overload without being papered one bit.
Since I have the use of an iPad I am using that device more and more as a 'book' reading resource and indulge myself with the occasional ebook. A whole library -- of once were paper product -- is now at my digital fingertips without me having to enlarge the domestic bookcase.
Ah, remember the days when moving house was so much about moving books...? Hundreds of books weighted up with pages of substance that had to be carted around with your shifting domicile? Now I keep only a few books for sentimental value and re-reading purposes in three milk crates behind me. I am a cured biblioholic.
The hard copy books I do read -- and I still do read hard copy books every day of my digital existence -- I order online and pick them up at the branch of the local library.And now and then I buy an ebook -- but only a rare now and then. I am public library dependent.
The irony is that picking up the books and carting their paper made kilogramage is the most irksome of reading tasks. Hard copy is indeed always heavy reading.
As for daily newspapers , I may peruse a copy of the day's edition in a coffee shop if I'm caffeinating.
So Mr Murdoch -- Rupert -- I am so terribly sorry that I am biting into your profit margin.
Perhaps this trend -- of which I am but one indicative statistic -- begins to explain why my letterbox is overloaded several times each week with junk mail.
Junk mail: paper's last fight back.
If it wasn't for receiving the occasional bill and my overwhelming addiction to toilet paper, I would not have my hand on a sheet a paper for days on end.
