subject: Online Yearbooks: Fad Or The Future [print this page] Our lives are becoming more and more computerized and virtual, and something as simple as a yearbook is not immune to this trend. An online yearbook can make you do a double take. It is a foreign concept to many. Will online yearbooks become a fixture, or are they just a fad that will fade?
First, the obvious. A yearbook is a physical book. Traditionally, anyway. E-books are becoming very popular. Why not create e-yearbooks?
People like autographing yearbooks, but you need paper books to do so. The computer cannot currently replicate the nostalgic experience of reading a yearbook decades later and seeing handwritten notes from friends. Stated another way, it is not possible to sign an e-book.
Or maybe it is possible?
Blogging to online yearbooks can be a substitute for physical signatures. Diehards who prefer physical handwritten signatures made with good old fashioned pens hate the idea of blogged yearbooks. Generation next is a different story. They know how to send e-mail by their third trimester, and are born with ipads in hand. Moments after their umbilical cords are cut they look at parents with irritation and say, "why weren't you e-mailing me for the last eight weeks?"
Online yearbooks are transient. Paper yearbooks cannot be altered. There are hundreds spread out. An online yearbook hosted on a single server can be changed by simply hacking that server. If it is changed without anyone knowing, history is edited, ala 1984 by Orwell. The CIA and military industrial complex loves the idea of being able to erase anyone from history if they don't do what the establishment says.
Another advantage of online yearbooks is cost. Wealthier readers may find it inconceivable, but in many poor communities children can't afford yearbooks. An online yearbook could be free, or made for only the cost of a single URL if students produce it for free.
Online yearbooks are also easier to distribute. They can be transferred anywhere on Earth instantaneously, which a physical paper book cannot.
As online yearbooks don't use paper, no trees are killed to produce them. They are more "green."
An online yearbook can't be signed, but a paper yearbook can't record video. Decades from now, people with yearbooks which playback video of old friends may look at written yearbooks as some primitive antiquity like a phonograph.
Printers worry about lost revenue as less and less yearbooks are physically printed. They could charge fees to host yearbook sites and design and set them up. They could also sell standalone tablet computers which might be stored on shelves like books, turned after lying dormant for years, and replay video of long lost acquaintances. Companies could recoup revenue by adapting and selling e-yearbooks.
A traditional yearbook shows but a few snapshots of extracurricular activities, but an online video can contain video of the football team's state championship victory or prom.
A traditional yearbook captures a single brief instant of time. An online yearbook could document a high school class continually, until death. It could automatically update profiles from places like Facebook. This would make it a kind of nonstop class reunion. You wouldn't have to wait decades to find out how all those long lost strangers have fared. Which would make reunions less shocking.
by: terrecescott
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