Sure, some things are harder to accept than others. One of those hard-to-accept things, at least for readers and writers of a certain age, may be watching the eclipse of the printed word on paper by the inexorable march of the digital age. Since that first Sumerian scribe took his stylus to a flattened piece of clay, the medium has always been an integral part of the message. Around 1300 the word “tablet” came to fore, defined as a slab or flat surface for an inscription. Regardless, the important thing to remember here is that this simple technology provided a way to store data and a means to share it or access the information it contained on demand.
As writing and the technologies to convey it advanced, the word “tablet” began to connote sheaves of paper bound on edge. An invention that gained immense traction as the medium of choice once Gutenberg and his new-fangled printing press put the printed word in the form of books in the hands of the masses. This led to an explosion of human knowledge sharing.
According to one Internet source, Buckminster Fuller created the “Knowledge Doubling Curve;” noting that until 1900 human knowledge doubled approximately every century. By the end of World War II, he said, knowledge began to double every 25 years. Not too shabby considering most of this knowledge was stored on paper. As most understand, the advent of computers changed everything, including the growth of human knowledge — driving a transition from a centuries-in-the-making linear trajectory to that of an exponential one. Dealing with all this information, according to researchers, will require developing even more advanced technology including more sophisticated software, shareability tools and even artificial intelligence!
But the point is that the technologies employed by humans to store and convey information have had everything to do with the ability to access information quickly and conveniently. And that brings me to the heart of the matter. Select Pharmaceutical Manufacturing issues are now available in a digital, iOS-enabled tablet form. If you are ready to download your next dose of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing magazine in this easy-to-access form, simply open Newsstand on your iOS enabled tablet, click Store, then search Pharmaceutical Manufacturing to access the free app downloadable to any iOS 7 or newer iPad tablet.
Equipped with the App, readers will find the top editorial content they’ve come to expect plus features only a tablet can deliver including downloads, videos and animated demonstrations, convenient web links and the active, high-resolution graphic format that tablet fans have come to love, in a highly functional form that supports the growth of your own personal base of human knowledge. So welcome to the new age and the new Pharmaceutical Manufacturing tablet edition. Meanwhile, is it irony or just mere coincidence that the most modern medium for conveying the written word is still called a tablet?
To download select issues of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Magazine, simply open Newsstand on your iOS enabled tablet, click Store then search Pharmaceutical Manufacturing to access the free app downloadable to any iOS 7 or newer iPad tablet.
