After a recent visit to the mail boxes I noticed the pile of phone books that no one seems to want or care about. A month later they are still there.

This makes me wonder. How much longer will phone companies continue to pour time and energy into producing these archaic things? When will they finally wake up and say, “These things take way too much time to produce, and no one reads them.”

In a previous job, the company for which I worked would produce multiple catalogs for a rather large product line including 100,000+ product numbers. Some of these catalogs would take years to produce. There was intense review process to make sure that everything was correct, and this all took a ridiculous amount of time. By the time the catalog went to press, many on the part numbers or measurements would be incorrect, rendering the catalog about as useful as a paperweight. I can only image how complex the design process would be for something like Yellow Pages or a company like McMaster-Carr even with an automated process.

I can’t predict when, but print will die or slowly become relegated to the art world. The integration of wireless devices like smart phones and Amazons Kindle® are going to eat away at the print businesses. I’ve already seen many campaigns from paper companies pushing the greatness of paper. It is interesting to see how businesses are pushing paper to stay alive.

Inevitably as we see a decline in the baby boomer generation, wi-max becomes available, and wireless devices become more affordable, I can see the need for print to be less and less.

When do you think print will become obselete?

UPDATE » 2008/09/17
Its Official. Print is dead.