Dr Doom (Joe Webb) is not all the way to Dr Feel Good. But he's starting to sound like Dr Feel Better. And the power of lazy.

In this morning's WTT email newsletter, Dr Joe Webb is setting a slightly different course for Print 09. It seems that he's moving from "Face the facts about what's going on" to "Consider what you can do about what's already happened."

The title of the post is

In the Current and Emerging Era of Rampant Connectivity and Social Media, Where Do Print's Benefits Stand Now?

. . .
Here is where those some of those benefits now stand and the impact these forces have had on them; this is followed by some discussion about what this all means to our industry:

Permanence . . .
Portability . . .
Print's positive effect on multichannel communications' total ROI . . .
Superior appearance of print . . .
Works with integrated media . . .
Buyers/information seekers look for and expect printed materials . . .
Print fosters reader autonomy . . .
Supports personal interaction . . .
The ubiquity of print . . .

Advertising/ marketing are much less interesting-to-me than education and health
From that point of view, the crux of the matter are Print fosters reader autonomy . . . and The ubiquity of print . . .

Autonomy is one operational definition of power. Every high school boy has autonomy/power some where close to at the top of the list. That's why they fight, debate, compete. The good news is that when harnessed it's a drive to excellence. The bad news is that when left unmanaged it could be a drive to Juvenile Detention.

The ubiquity of print means it is searchable without the need to engage the "word" part of the brain. Print can be scanned, not searched. Scanning a Supermarket FSI takes much less energy than searching for the same information on a computer or smart phone.

There are two deep principles at work.
One is the sustainability of using the least energy to acquire the most information. Search is the killer app because finding where to get information is the hard part. Print is the most efficient search platform because the visual part of the brain can be engaged much more easily than on the internet. Scanning takes less energy than searching. Consider a personalized TV guide for anywhere, anytime TV. It solves the "a gezillion channels and nothing to watch" problem.

The other principle is that people are naturally lazy. "Hard work" is a bug, not a feature. Hard work is often busy being busy. From the outside focused thinking can look like lazy or distracted. My dad was a master pressman for over 25 years. He irritated the heck out of his boss because he never looked like he was doing much. His boss's frustration came from the fact finished press sheets kept stacking in a delivery with the regularity that was engineered into a printing press. Consider how inside people judged the prep department back in the day."What do they do in there anyway and why can't I have the plate/proof NOW?"

Productive "lazy" is quality output with minimum input of energy. Unproductive lazy is a different story.