"Hai visto il mio giornale?" - "Hai provato nell'iPad?"

Sulla rivoluzione digitale di libri e giornali ognuno ha qualcosa da dire, e mai nessuno è della stessa opinione. Qualche settimana fa sul New Yorker, una rivista così eccezionale che non esisterà mai in Italia per la stessa ragione per cui in Italia non c'è New York, esce questo bel pezzo per lanciare la versione tablet della rivista. E per sottolineare ancora una volta l'importanza di una cosa sola, nonostante tutto: la scrittura.

"Beginning with this issue, that generalized instantaneousness has come: The New Yorker will be available on the Apple iPad, on Mondays, wherever you happen to be. Print remains, by miles, our most popular form; unlike a Sunday newspaper, say, the print magazine is still a beautiful, portable, storable, slide-it-into-your-bag-able technology. (...)

We’re at once delighted and a little bewildered about this latest digital development and our place in it: delighted because of the quality of what the tablet provides and the speed with which the magazine can be distributed, but bewildered, too, because we’d be liars if we said we knew precisely where technology will lead. These are early days. Right now, editing for the iPad feels similar to making television shows just after the Second World War, when less than one per cent of American households owned a television. (...)

The one thing we are sure of is the purpose of the magazine. The New Yorker will always be foremost about free expression, about the written word, about reading. Technology, the means of delivering this writing, is a very important, but secondary, matter, and we intend to keep providing the magazine in whatever form seems to work. Editors here are always willing to make improvements in the cause of writing."