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The publishers of the 119-year old weekly newspaper, The Budget, almost caused a riot – or at least a strike – when they proposed to move the paper from print to online in 2006.

Earlier this year the publisher reconsidered the plan to go online.

What WERE they thinking?

The newspaper, a main means of communication for the dispersed Amish community – about 227,000 members nation wide – is targeted to an audience whose religion expects them to shun telephones, automobiles, and electricity. Nearly 20,000 subscribers across the US and Canada pay $42 a year for a subscription and the subscriber base is stable.

If you think mainstream media is suffering from loss of readership, just think what the result would have been if The Budget had dropped the printed version and gone completely online!

Didn’t anyone think about their audience?

Read the rest of the story here.

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In the world of printing and graphic design, discussions around paper – where it comes from and where it goes – are going on all the time. Some of those discussions get pretty heated too. Let’s move from the serious to the sublime.

Wataru Itou, a Japanese art student, took 4 years to create this amazing paper sculpture out of cut and folded paper. Enjoy and be amazed!

First published by Gizmodo, where you can find more images.

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Star Trek fans everywhere have dreamed of walking onto the Holodeck and being surrounded by -- and participating in -- life-size, 360 degree virtual reality. More and more we’re seeing incremental developments from touch and gesture input to high resolution holographics. It may be that our grandchildren will consider “imaginary worlds” common place.

In this video, we science fiction readers and dreamers see one version of our own “brave new world.” Build your own!

On the dark side; when does virtual reality become more “real” than real?

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