As Cheap and Dubious Content Spreads Online, Print Finds a New Value
As the internet becomes flooded with cheap content, discerning truth from falsehood will turn into a Herculean task. A deluge of untrustworthy content threatens to drown out the voices of credibility.
It’s under these circumstances we can imagine a revival in the value of print.
Content printed with ink on dead trees could gain a new kind of premium and cachet that would be counter to every trend of the last 20 years. The reason for this counter-trend is that print will bring with it “proof of trust.”
Drawing inspiration from the world of economics, specifically from the “proof of work” concept in Bitcoin, “proof of trust” hinges on the simple idea that value can be derived from provable effort.
Gold has been valued by humans for over 5,000 years. Part of the reason it has held this value is that the element cannot be produced easily. Despite the best efforts of many, the only way to get gold is to dig it out of the ground. Holding a piece of gold in your hand is evidence that somebody somewhere put in the time, effort and labor to extract it from the earth. Since gold can’t exist in our economy without that effort being exerted, it keeps the element relatively scarce and valuable.
Read the complete article here: https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2023/why-generative-ai-makes-print-valuable/