The Impact of the International Internet on Printing from the Perspective of Information Science

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 scary 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.

From the above theories and perspectives to re-examine the printing technology and printing industry, modern printing technology should be regarded as a combination of traditional printing technology and electronic information technology. The information society we are talking about contains a lot of electronic (or digital) meanings of human information. In addition to the tasks of traditional human information processing, processing, and transfer to paper media, printing also requires human information. The task of transferring electronic and electronic human information to paper media. Whether from "human informatics" or "mechanical informatics", printing technology has a close relationship with information science.
2. The advantage of information performance and dissemination is the main reason why the Internet affects printing. Clothing can avoid the cold, the car can take the place, and the printed matter 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.

1. The Internet's Advantages in Performance Content The forms of information carried by printed materials can be summed up into three types: text form, graphic form, and image form. In addition to the above three forms, the Internet also includes sounds, moving images, and graphic animations in the form of expression of information content, making the information more intuitive, vivid, and vivid. Therefore, as far as the forms of information are concerned, the Internet covers all possible forms of expression of broadcast, television and newspapers in the past and is unmatched by print.

However, the advantages of the Internet in information performance are not only manifested in the types of expressions, but more importantly in the performance of the hypermedia information. The biggest difference between browsing information and reading printed information on the Internet is that through hyperlinks, we can change the direction of our viewing and obtain timely background information related to the information being viewed, instead of just reading the printed matter. The resort reads.

People's thinking is based on the connection between the information stored in the brain. People grasp things themselves by grasping the connections between things. Therefore, information can be better accessed, understood and used by people only if information is organized and expressed according to the relationship between them. This idea of ​​connecting organizations, expressions, and accessing information (especially textual information) by information is the so-called idea of ​​hypertext. If the information involved includes text, graphics, images, sounds, animations, and moving images, it is the so-called hypermedia idea. Prior to the invention of the computer, American Vanner Bush had already put forward the idea of ​​hypertext in 1945, but neither the material machinery at the time nor the information machinery at that time had realized this idea to a large extent. Internet technology developed in the last decade or so has not only realized hypertext but also realized hypermedia. What is more important is that the Internet popularizes and popularizes the information organization and performance of hypermedia, which has led people to develop a habit of using information to link information on the Internet. This kind of habit cannot of course be applied to printed matters.

People often say that the Internet can provide more information than print, and the large amount of information is one of the reasons why the Internet is transformed into print. Before the effective statistics were made, there was no theoretical basis for this argument. However, from the point of view of the organization and presentation of information by the Internet in the manner of hypermedia, the Internet allows people to obtain the most effective information in the most effective time. Therefore, the impression that people have access to more information than print on the Internet is understandable.

2. Advantages of the Internet in information dissemination The advantages of the Internet in information dissemination are very obvious. Prints are spread by hand, and information on the Internet is transmitted through information machines. The essence of the information dissemination method of the Internet lies in its cross-temporal space. Day and night, and thousands of miles of water do not affect the spread of information on the Internet. However, this cross-temporality in the dissemination of information is not unique to the Internet. Broadcasting and television information dissemination also spans space-time. The advantage of the Internet over information transmission in existing media lies in its unique two-way nature.

Regardless of broadcasting, television, or newspapers and periodicals, their information dissemination methods are all so-called broadcasting methods, that is, one-way information publishing methods. The role of information sources and information receptors is relatively fixed. The situation on the Internet is different. The dissemination of information is two-way and interactive. Recipients of information can also be publishers of information. Recipients of information can exchange information with the publisher of the information on the same media in a timely manner. This is impossible for various media in the past.

3. Printing is still advantageous in terms of unification of form and content diversity. After discussing the advantages of the Internet in information representation and dissemination, we may need to clarify where the essential characteristics of print differ from the Internet. Whether through mobile phones or e-books, the Internet's representation of information can be attributed to "hypertext information on digital displays." It is also difficult to describe it clearly with simple words. Because there is no unified information carrier such as a "digital display", there is no such general information as "hypermedia information." If you want to summarize the print matter, you may only use a relatively abstract text to describe it. The so-called print is the "unity of information content and information carrier." For example, for packaging printed matter, there is no printed box, not a packaged printed matter; a printed packing board is used instead of a box, but for decoration, it is not a printed matter. The unification of information carriers and information content, and the various forms of information carriers are the essential differences between print and the Internet.

The information carrier itself carries the information needed by the information receiver; information leaves its inherent carrier, and the information of the carrier itself no longer exists, and the value of the information itself is also greatly reduced. What can the box on the display tell us? Due to the differences in media, appearance, purpose of use, and geometric shapes of prints, the role of prints in people's social life will also vary. E.g:

(l) Information release media

(2) Advertising products

(3) Literature and academic books

(4) Educational Tools

(5) Entertainment Products

(6) Decorations

(7) ID card

(8) Trademark Packages

(9) Gifts

(10) Collectibles

(11) Securities

These are the roles that print often plays. Due to the peculiar advantages of the Internet, the functions of the first five kinds of printed materials have become major components of the Internet's practical functions. The function of the latter six kinds of printed matter, although the Internet is also involved, but compared with the printed matter is fine. What is even more interesting is that electronic money and electronic ID cards have created a new printing industry - a magnetic card printing. This also reflects the unique advantages of printing on the unity of information content and information carrier.

We can think of prints abstractly as the unity of information content and information carrier. The practical value of print is based on this unity, based on social needs. People's demand for print is neither the demand for its information content alone, nor the demand for information carriers alone, but the demand for the unity of content and carriers. In terms of content, the Internet can express almost all the content that can be represented by printed materials, but the Internet cannot display information in the content that print can represent.