The Continuity of Printing: Understanding the Essence of New Printing Technologies

[ppzhan abstract] Some traditions were invented 50 years ago and may still be passed down for another 50 years; traditional Chinese chess and mahjong have existed for hundreds of years and will continue to exist for hundreds more. Printing, then, was invented over a hundred years ago - can it last another hundred years?

The printing industry today is looking forward to the changes that new technologies will bring. When we think about the future of printing and discuss e-commerce in printing, some people have even coined new terms such as "new functional printing". So how will these new terms affect the printing industry?

In fact, is there any need to debate whether printing will survive? We should recognize the essence of the impact of new technologies and should not be swayed by media headlines. Media editors often design headlines to catch readers' eyes. If a new technology makes up for the ineffectiveness of a traditional thing, it will replace that tradition.

If we visit a gang-run printing plant and find that it can actually handle tens of thousands of orders a day, we should not focus our attention on the colorful web features and the computer-managed automated production process. If we visit a digital printing plant where 60-70 digital presses are busy running non-stop, we should focus our attention on the brands and specifications of the presses, because that is not the function of these technologies.

We should try to understand "which ineffective part of other printing plants did they replace, and how did they replace it?"

The total output value of printing in various regions has not fluctuated much. The extra business of these good printing plants is business that originally belonged to other printing plants. They must have made up for the ineffectiveness of other printing plants at some stage. They did not become effective because they bought new technology; rather, they found the stage in the whole business process that was worth improving, and then brought in new technology to improve it. It might be the printing sales stage, it might be the delivery stage, and of course it might also be the printing production stage.

New technologies, whether digital presses, mobile devices or e-books, cannot have an impact on the development of the printing industry as a whole, so a printing plant will not be replaced by new technology, but it will be replaced by another printing plant, if the business efficiency is unreasonable, or if digitization is unreasonable. We expect too much from new changes, yet we overlook an interesting phenomenon that has emerged in the new technology changes of recent years: the shorter the time a new thing takes to change the status quo, the shorter its stay is relatively. For example, an online game may change the daily game schedule of millions of people within three months, and it may also be abandoned by millions of people within three months. Group-buying websites helped many restaurants find new customers who would never have come to dine at the restaurant within a year or two, and within just a year or two, group-buying websites were regarded by many restaurants as parties to be refused further dealings with.

——This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn). Original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-361791.html