The Papernet

I want to use the Internets for the things they are good at — like distribution and searchification — but I am not ready to give up something I can hold in my hands. I am not ready to have all my actions dictated by the physical contraints of a device that is little more than over-priced landfill outside of a limited set of conditions.

It’s true that paper is no match for, say, molasses or fire but then neither are computers.

Paper, on the other hand, can suffer water and power failures; can be folded and sat on; can be thrown; can be copied by humans and machines alike; is about eight million times less irritating at the dinner table.

The really great thing about digital publishing tools and mobile devices connected to the Internets is that we have almost reached to the point where we can toggle seamlessly … between physical and digital artifacts without needing to say really assinine things like : Paper is dead.

We can use the computers to generate paper things to use and hold in the comfort of our own privacy and to share with friends and barcodes … to link them back to a larger community.”

(Extracted from : http://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2006/12/17/meat/#papernet)

A discussion of ideas, applications, working code and pit-falls [1] to bridge the world of printed and digital media and mobile devices, beyond the “gee-whiz” factor.

[1] For example, as of this writing, Nokia’s barcode reader can figure out that the text of a vcard entry contains a phone number, a postal code and a URL but not that it is looking at a vcard entry itself…