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When I was a cub reporter in the fifties, new technology meant a high-speed printing press, everything else had been around for at least a century. Caxton might have marvelled at the high-speed press, and Addison and Steele would have been impressed by the linotype machine and the typewriter, but all else was much the same as in their day.

I go so far as to say that all three today would be quick to pick up the essentials of web-offset cold printing and the ubiquitous Mac and PC.

But what would stretch their eyes is the New Millennium. A circular metal disk really doesn't bear much relation to the printed word on paper.

We really have come a long way - very suddenly!

I was gently introduced to the so-called New Technology in the eighties at the Sunday Mirror. They had been talked into installing a huge mainframe computer which controlled and stored everything.

It was wonderful to be able to call up a news story on screen, and at a stroke so to speak, to sub-edit and set it for printing, at the same time. I remember the shock when I first saw the paper with my headline and story there exactly as I had prepared it. Even the glaring literal in the second paragraph was all my own work: Biy instead of boy, as I recall. Chastisements were duly received and deserved.

The light dawned. No-more would I depend on a stroppy linotype operator or compositor to set my copy correctly. It was all down to me. How Addison would have liked that; how Caxton would have chuckled.

But, you know, to change the font of the text type, for instance, meant putting in a command string about 16 characters long, which you got from a style book, with all kinds of opportunities for getting it wrong. Especially if you were under pressure - which you generally were.

Of course, it's easy to laugh now at the early use of computer's in newspapers. We are all gifted with 20:20 hindsight.

Then came the Mac's and the advent of the mouse, and suddenly it was all so easy. In a blink it seems we now have the CD ROM magazine. We can communicate with you through your personal computer, with words, with graphics, moving pictures, sound. And you can do what you like with the information. Record it, alter it, add to it, condense it, you can even send it round the world if you want to.

The penny drops. It isn't easy. It's harder, if anything. Instead of a simple pen and piece of paper, we have a whole new toolbox to work with.

The invention of writing was probably Man's greatest step forward. It conquered death in that I can read today what young Pliny wrote nearly 2,000 years ago. He speaks directly to me from way beyond the grave, sharing his life, his thoughts, his wisdom. And in time, I trust, he'll do the same for my grandchildren.

That's what writing gave us. Communication. With all these marvellous new ways to communicate, I am suddenly aware of a great responsibility. Is what I am trying to say worth saying at all? Never mind how other skilled hands dress it up with graphics, moving images, and sound. The message is what counts.

That will never change. We can stimulate your imagination now in ways undreamt of yesterday. It is great to be in at the birth of this revolution. But what a responsibility. What a challenge to creativity.

The task now is to make the message equal to the means, and that will take some thinking about.

References

William Caxton (1422 - 1491) Inventor of a printing press and father of English printing. Return To Text

Joseph Addison (1672 - 1719) and Sir Richard Steele(1672 - 1729) co-editors of the Spectator, the essays of which have subsequently passed into literature. Return To Text

The Sunday Mirror (for non UK residents) is one of Englands best selling Sunday tabloid newspapers. Return To Text

CD ROM = Compact Disc Read Only Memory. These are similar to audio cd's but they store computer data as well! Return To Text

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