This Month's Spectrum Summary:

(The following is an excerpt from the December 2007 issue of Spectrum, a proprietary monthly briefing published exclusively for the clients of I.T. Strategies, Inc. © 2007)

A Year-End Reverie in Three Parts- Our Careers, Our Industry: Parallels, Rewards, Destiny

This month, for this final article by Ted Webster, our SPECTRUM editor since the beginning over ten years ago, we sit down with him and consultants Mark, Marco and Patti to talk about the really big picture. For a change, the consultants ask Ted to share his thoughts rather than just serve as a channel for theirs.

First, a look back. We discuss whether one of the best things that never happened to the industry has been that the transition to color did not happen overnight. The verdict is mixed. Color is taken for granted, especially at the low end. But there are still millions of black and white laser printers and digital presses at work around the world. It has taken time for the application to catch up with the technology and this is probably good. What about the future of print in general? Younger people, especially, are said to still communicate with words but tend to ignore print. Paper in terms of economics and sustainability is becoming less and less efficient and will in time become virtually obsolete.

Your editor is asked to reflect on his business career and its fit with the evolution of the industry. Readers are invited to consider their own fit with the evolving industry and also whether for them, or for anyone, their work in the industry can be considered "fun."

This prompts a rundown of your editor's 45 years in the industry, from operating impact line printers in the late 1950s to founding Datek Information Services in the 1970s to retiring and finally coming back "home" to the industry with
I.T. Strategies as Spectrum editor in 1997.

On the question of fun and industry fit, it is felt "rewarding" is a better term. For this editor, work in the industry has been rewarding on a number of levels:

Although not a trained engineer, there's a certain affinity with machines, especially machines that we can see, touch, feel and even hear. Perhaps some sort of genetic coding. There is less of that as our industry goes ever more electronic, with hardcopy eclipsed by softcopy.

The industry has been also rewarding on the level of finding and meeting needs. Another level is helping others, especially employees during my Datek years, achieve and find a good fit for their career goals.

Also there has been lots of room for creativity. I am especially grateful that
I.T. Strategies encouraged me to research and publish the history of digital printing, the book Print Unchained, issued in 2000 and now almost sold out.

Finally, there is of course economics: getting paid as an important measure of being valued in our culture. But now, despite all these rewards, there are some discomforting trends. The hardware is getting too soft. Commoditization. Ever fuzzier focus from hardware to "solutions," however defined. And the question about the long term future of print.

Forces working against the long term future of print as we know it include limited human attention span, the rise of e-books, an ever stronger tilt toward electronic transactions, and how people are conditioned by electronic media to think differently and be less likely to be drawn to books or at home with printed documents.

We close touching on the contribution of Marshall McLuhan to this theory with his "the medium is the message" and strangely enough, the Dr. Seuss children's book The Lorax. The book's hero struggles to save Earth's trees from greedy, polluting industrialists. At the end he says "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

My hope for all of us in this industry is that the Lorax's hope will become our hope.