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Information is the product (part 3).

The bad news is that I am still hammering away at this information thing until I wring something of use out of it. The good news is that I think I’m getting a bit closer. In fact, I think I may be able to put this one to rest in this post – at least for a while.

A little over a year ago we were doing some strategy work for one of our clients in the printing area. Our insight was that while most printer manufacturers are aiming their sights squarely upon high-quality, long-lasting printouts, that isn’t actually the best use of printing. If I want to store something for a long time in high quality and share it with other people, digital is a much better answer. Conversely, if I want to work or collaborate with someone, if I want to edit or work with information and develop it, paper is the ideal medium.

digital v paper001 Information is the product (part 3).

This is a complete shift from the early thinking around digital which had it as the temporary medium and paper as the permanent. Digital is, in fact, more permanent. Xerox figures at least 20% of what gets printed is discarded the same day and the majority is thrown away within the weeks that follow. Only a small fraction of what gets printed, ever gets saved and stored. Meanwhile the costs for storing and distributing physical paper are skyrocketing, while the costs for storing and sharing digital information are trending towards zero.

The implication is here is that while keeping information digital is the best strategy most of the time, there are points when a physical interface for information is necessary and useful.

This echoes the idea that products and services are arguments for how we should live our lives. The subtext of this thought is that products and services give physical form to information. They encapsulate, arrange and present information in ways that we can easily use in our physical lives.

For me there are a couple of quite radical implications in all of this. Firstly: the message in the paper example and in the 3D printing story I told which kicked this whole information is the product thing off is that physical forms may actually be the temporary states for information, while digital forms may actually be the permanent states.

Additionally, if products are simply physical expressions of digital information, there is an opportunity to completely reinvent the products we use by rethinking which bits of information should be digital and which should be physical for any task.

And finally, this also implies that the ideal state for many different kinds of products is a digital/physical hybrid. I think of a multi-purpose physical interface which allows me to use a variety of digital services or information to alter its role for any given task (this is essentially what a PC or smartphone already is).

Adopting an information0-centric framework is quite a radical shift from the way we see the world today. It turns product design into information design, physical architecture into information architecture, and so on. It requires an integration of digital skills and physical skills. It requires people who have only ever thought about planes and shapes to start thinking about bits and bytes and vice-versa. It will be interesting to see what happens.

p.s. Thanks for sticking in there with me (if anyone is still paying attention). It’s finally become worthwhile (for me at least).

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 4:58 pm and is filed under design, digital, information, product. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Coming to think of it, nature is the inspiration here.
    Nature Integrates information into objects - creating the miracle of life. But around us, we see objects as lifeless primarily because they cannot reproduce. But they have information content - in un-reproducible form.

    The internet - the other miracle, creates a means to store information about these objects in way that they are reproducible. This is what you are talking about ?
  • blaiq
    In biology, the information that makes up a species is contained within its genes and is referred to as the 'genotype' and its physical/behavioural expression as 'the phenotype.' Our bodies are, in effect, phenotypes carved out by our genes.

    So we humans are also products/printouts of 'information' that we carry in ourselves (the digital/physical hybrid) and pass along - changing random bits of it as we do so.
  • Lee
    Excellent post. Come to think of it, I'm much more likely to toss out a printout than to delete a file. Mind blowing to think of the shift that has already happened and the shift that is to come.
  • Stephanie, really interesting analogy. I agree, dance is a fantastic metaphor for matter over information. Negative space is as communicative as where the body goes - what an inspiring thought.

    Thanks!
  • sounds kinda Socratic: digital as the ideal form, and physical as a temporary one. in the words of our friendly wikipedians, "According to Socrates, physical objects and physical events are "shadows" of their ideal or perfect forms, and exist only to the extent that they instantiate the perfect versions of themselves."

    also reminds me that as a dancer, I prioritize space over stuff. this makes me especially sensitive to stuff I think shouldn't exist, which I harshly refer to as an "insult to matter." shoulda just remained as energy. but upon reading your post, perhaps shoulda just remained digital.

    "this also implies that the ideal state for many different kinds of products is a digital/physical hybrid." product can also be hybrid in terms of the trajectory of their lifetime - precipitating out of digital solution (so to speak) and taking physical form temporarily, but living most of their lives in digital form. I can't think of an example, but hey, your post is exploratory and I liked this idea.

    anyways, thanks. I've been enjoying this trip ;)
  • Nicholas Negroponte made the point in his book "Being Digital"- 1996- "bits, not atoms"- in the way to transmit data.
    Basically, once you commit your data to atoms- it has just entered the waste stream- no longer up datable, no longer easy to share, search, link to- etc.
    Every piece of paper started out with digital data- why do we still insist on screwing it up by printing it and adding all those additional costs for a less robust product?
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