Last week, our friends at Rattle made a newspaper as part of the research output from one of their projects, My Life As An Object.
We think it works really well as a way to get people reading stuff, partly due to the form factor (people are used to newspapers, rather than A4 bound reports or Powerpoint print outs) and partly to the sense of timeliness that’s imbued in the paper itself. This is now, or nowish, rather than something destined to go on a shelf and gather dust. Newspapers decay quite fast and that is good, because the value of information does too.
And they’re not wrong. The permanent, perpetually perfect nature of the screen lacks the visual clues that indicates the age of the information within. I stumbled upon my copy of Things Our Friends Have Written On The Internet whilst clearing out my drawers over the weekend – it’s gone slightly yellow, slightly crisp, but it looks like something that’s nearly two years old should.
A couple of months ago, I found myself sitting next to lady in the pub who works as an archivist for a large library. I asked her what the best way to preserve newspapers is. It turns out they need to be kept flat (the fold will fall apart first), and out of the sunshine. If you can seal them from air with a laminate sleeve, that’s good too.
Maybe we should sell laminate sleeves, for people who want to preserve their papers for years to come. But, for the rest of us the patina will slowly develop on our papers, and eventually, one day, they’ll fall apart. And I quite like that.
There’s more about Rattle’s paper on their blog.
