Fascinating story in Wired about a hand-written paper facing a digital future. Many people I know from South Asia appreciate the beauty of Urdu calligraphy, even if most of us cannot understand it. The story highlights one of the challenges facing us as we move into an increasingly digital world. The story showed up at an interesting time, just after I had heard an interview on NPR with Andrew Keen. My reactions to the two were also an interesting contrast .

Change is inevitable. Our society has survived other, massive, shifts brought around by technology. Seen over a period of time, most of those changes are for the better. It is in the latter context that listening to Keen rant against the cult of the amateur made my want to call up the show and engage the man in a debate. To a large degree he comes across as someone screaming to defend his turf, a turf that is increasingly being taken over by the internet, whether it be the music industry or news media. Society and business are changing before our very eyes. Print was democratizing. Radio was democratizing. The internet might seem like anarchy, but in the end it is the ultimate democratizer. Instead of clinging to our past and protecting our turf like Keen seems to do, we are better of understanding how we can use the medium to deliver the quality of results that Keen seems to think have been ruined forever by user generated content.

Which brings us back to the Wired piece. My reaction there could be seen as paradoxical to the reaction to Keen. How does one preserve such aspects of our culture as beautiful Urdu calligraphy? Does it have to be hand written? Can it evolve and thus survive? Interesting questions which we will answer over the next decade or so as the internet pervades our lives.