Paper doing the white man’s overbite
Posted on November 2, 2009
Filed Under geek, magazines, unlikely |
I find it difficult to get excited over Esquire’s “Augmented Reality Issue,” out next week. As a veteran of magazines — a casualty of them, actually — I have to say that this kind of thing is just dead wrong. You get a magazine with a glyph on the front that you hold up to a cam and then a thing goes whooooo and some creature does a flip and starts singing showtunes right there on your computer screen!. Actually, I don’t know what I’m supposed to get from this augmented reality (link to Esquire site in this Geeksugar post goes nowhere; this AP story is a little more illuminating) but can it be any better than what could simply be embedded into the digital version of Esquire delivered by Zinio? I think that what people still like about magazines (and people still do like them) is that they are tangible, portable things. It is a slightly retro appeal. The truth is, despite all the really cool things one can do with digital distribution, people do not want to read magazines on their computers. I don’t think readers are complaining that their magazines aren’t gimmicky enough; I don’t think readers finish an article printed on paper and feel empty inside because they can’t immediately discuss it with strangers. Print magazines are suffering, but not because they are low-tech. But if they start seeming embarrassed about their low-techiness, I think their suffering will get worse. So much of what’s happening to magazines has to do with perception; magazines may be doomed because a lot of people (particularly advertisers) think they’re doomed. Stuff like this isn’t helping.
I’ll get my copy of Esquire next week and I’ll give the Augmented Reality Issue the old college try. Maybe I will feel, in the words of the magazine’s art director, “like a caveman seeing fire for the first time.”
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itchy
