Impact of the Internet on Printing from the Perspective of Information Science (1)

In today's development of Internet technology and applications, perhaps no industry is more complex than the printing industry. The Internet is not only changing the printing industry in the form of production and business. The terrible thing is that it seems to eliminate the traditional printing industry. The printing industry is faced with a more severe situation than it was when printing radio and television was born. How to objectively and accurately view the impact of the Internet on the traditional printing industry, and how the printing technology will develop under such influence, is an issue that needs to be answered urgently and cannot be evaded.
As far as pure technology is concerned, printing technology and internet technology are two technologies that are irrelevant to each other. The former appeared before 1000 years ago; the latter only has a short period of time of more than ten years. What caused the Internet technology to have such a profound influence on the old printing technology, and people are worried about the development of printing technology. In the process of discussing the impact of the Internet on printing, people often draw different conclusions because of the different industries and technological backgrounds. Perhaps discussing this issue from a more neutral point of view in information science is more conducive to our objective judgment of the impact of the Internet on printing.
The relationship between printing technology and information science is now often said: "We have entered the information society." In the research of information science, there is a branch known as “information communication” or “human informatics”. It is an information discipline that specializes in the transmission, dissemination, and exchange of information between members of human society. The information that "information communication" pays attention to is the most widely used type of information in all types of information so far. In fact, it covers all the original meaning of information. The so-called “human information” is a general term for news, news, news, information, indicators, data, intelligence, orders, instructions, knowledge, literary, and artistic discourse content. In the study of the "information communication" media, apart from print media, broadcast media, and television media, the Internet has also been added as a new type of media in recent years.
Another very active branch of information science is "Mechanical Informatics," or Computer Science and Communication Science. It is a science that specializes in studying the existence, transmission, transformation, behavior, and processing laws of mechanical information in information machinery. What is information machinery? According to the explanation given by the theory of mechanics, there are three types of machinery, namely, power machinery, material machinery, and information machinery, which realize the processing and transmission of energy, materials, and information, respectively. The power machinery completes the conversion between different energies, the material machine processes or displaces the material, and the task of the information machine is to process or transmit the information. Information machinery includes traditional audio and video information machinery, communication information machinery and computing information machinery (computers). The main purpose of traditional information machines is the transmission and reproduction of information, and the main purpose of computer information technology is the processing and reproduction of information.
There is no doubt that the printing machinery belongs to the material machinery. It completes the processing, reproduction, and transmission of human information expressed in the form of words, graphics, and images carried by paper media; the machinery that implements the Internet technology is the information machine and is communication. The product of the combination of information machinery and computer information machinery, it is the realization of mechanical information, or electronic information processing, processing and transmission.
In the past 10 years, people have completed a revolutionary technological advancement between printing machinery and information machinery. That is to solve the problem of conversion between human information and electronic information expressed in the form of characters, images, and graphics. This kind of progress transforms the process of making, processing and copying human information into printed matter in traditional plate making and printing, and transforms it from human information to electronic information, and from electronic information to print production, processing and reproduction. This transformation is based on the tremendous development and improvement of computer technology in the representation and processing of human information. Electronic scanning technology, laser photocopying technology, computer text, graphics, image processing software technology, direct plate making technology, and digital printing technology enable human information to be transferred to films, plates, and papers through information machinery.
The superiority of information performance and communication is the main reason why the Internet influences printing. Clothing can avoid the cold, cars can travel, and printed materials can deliver news. Before there was no Internet, messages in the form of voice could be delivered by telephone and broadcast, and messages in the form of moving images could be delivered through television. Since both radio and television have dredged the expression of the text, the message in text form can only be transmitted through correspondence and printed matter. This is also one of the reasons why radio and television have not had a significant impact on printing (especially print). Now that the Internet has arrived, the situation seems to be different. Electronic (or digital) text messages can not only be expressed and transmitted on the Internet, but also appear to have many advantages over printed text messages. The momentum of staying above has shaken the position of printing in the field of expression and dissemination of written information. From the analysis of information dissemination, the reason why the Internet has such a significant impact on printing is mainly due to the Internet's advantages in information representation and dissemination. (To be continued)