NewsScan Daily, 7 December 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 7 December 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       Electronic Payments Have Overtaken Checks
       Got the Whole World in Your Handheld
       New Disc for Next-Generation DVD Players
       Zipping Through Border Checkpoints
       Medical Records-Sharing in Massachusetts

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       Worth Thinking About: Is Writing Old-Fashioned?

ELECTRONIC PAYMENTS HAVE OVERTAKEN CHECKS
     In 2003, Americans made 44.5 billion payments via electronic
transactions, compared to only 36.7 billion payments by paper checks. The
trend toward electronic purchases has been accelerated by strong growth in
the popularity of debit cards, which can now be used to buy almost anything.
Jean Ann Fox of the Consumer Federation of America says, "They're quick and
easy. You don't stand there and hold up everybody in line behind you. Plus,
folks are moving toward electronic banking and paying bills electronically."
But she warns: "It's getting very confusing for consumers, and companies
have not upgraded their protections." (Washington Post 6 Dec 2004)
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41858-2004Dec6.html>

GOT THE WHOLE WORLD IN YOUR HANDHELD
     Cellphones are becoming the new venue for compact culture: micro-lit
phone soap operas and made-for-mobile dramas. With most cellphones now
having color screens and the ability to receive picture messages,
entrepreneur David Harper of Wireless Ink remarks: "Are people going to read
'War and Peace' on their telephones? The answer is probably no. Right now
the content on mobile devices is almost like early television. What they did
then was to sit down and do a radio broadcast for the television screen."
British mobile-phone company Vodafone and 20th Century Fox have developed a
made-for-cellphone video series based on the TV series "24." Will cellphones
have an impact on book publishing? Kate Tentler of Simon & Schuster Online
says: "It would be crazy not to look at this. Smart phones are everywhere
and it's the fastest-growing device."(New York Times 7 Dec 2004)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/07/books/07cell.html>

NEW DISC FOR NEXT-GENERATION DVD PLAYERS
     Two Japanese companies, Toshiba and Memory-Tech, say they've developed
the world's first DVD that can be played on both standard and
high-definition DVD players, using the HD-DVD format. HD-DVD has the backing
of the DVD Forum, an international association of electronics makers and
movie studios, while its competitor, Blu-Ray, is backed by Sony, its
Hollywood studio and News Corp.'s Fox Entertainment Group. Blu-Ray has more
digital programming storage space but HD-DVD is expected to be cheaper to
make. (AP/San Jose Mercury News 7 Dec 2004)
<http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10358952.htm>

ZIPPING THROUGH BORDER CHECKPOINTS
     Foreigners entering the U.S. at some border crossings are now being
processed by a new digital screening program that quickly scans photos of
the traveler's face and index finger and matches them against federal
agencies' criminal databases. Vistor Adolfo Moroyoqui Felix, traveling
between Mexico and Phoenix, says: "It's much faster this way. They had to
fill out paperwork before. It's more effective this way." Other travelers
seem to agree. (AP/USA Today 7 Dec 2004)
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-12-07-border-print-program_x.htm>

MEDICAL RECORDS-SHARING IN MASSACHUSETTS
     If a new Massachusetts "eHealth" pilot project is successful,
physicians in that state will be able to access patients' records from any
hospital or clinic by computer. Gov. Mitt Romney says that switching from
paper records to easily shared electronic records could save the state
millions of dollars while improving patient safety and quality of care. He
has given assurances that the system will have strict controls to allow
patients to control who sees their records. (AP/Los Angeles times 7 Dec
2004)
<http://www.latimes.com/technology/ats-ap_technology14dec07,1,1268455.story?coll=sns-ap-toptechnology>

*****

FLASH CARD
     "I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of
fools. Let's start with typewriters." (Frank Lloyd Wright)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: IS WRITING OLD-FASHIONED?
     Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, worries
about the survival of literature in a post-literate media culture:
     "We are currently living in the midst of a massive culture revolution.
For the first time since the development of movable type in the late
fifteenth century, print has lost its primacy in communication. The
proliferation of electronic technology has gone far beyond providing a new
means for the communication, storage, and retrieval of information: the new
media have gradually changed not only the way we perceive language and ideas
but also the world and ourselves. The shift in the modes of communication
has had an extraordinary impact on every aspect of contemporary life, but
literature, an imaginative enterprise created entirely from words, has been
profoundly affected in ways that we are still in the process of
comprehending.
     "Many experts also feel that illiteracy is on the rise in America.
According to a 1986 United State Bureau of Census study, 13 percent of
Americans over the age of twenty are illiterate.
     "For years many intellectuals and academics have observed these trends
with a mixture of disappointment and detachment. While lamenting the sorry
state of literacy among the public, they remained confident in the power of
a print culture among educated Americans. That confidence now seems
misplaced. Books, magazines, and newspapers are not disappearing, but their
position in the culture has changed significantly over the past few decades,
even among the educated. We are now seeing the first generation of young
intellectuals who are not willing to immerse themselves in the world of
books. They are not against reading, but they see it as only one of the many
options for information. As the poet-critic Jack Foley has said, 'At the
current moment writing is beginning to seem 'old-fashioned.'"
                         ***
[From Dana Gioia's "Disappearing Ink: Poetry at the End of Print Culture";
to find a library copy of his "Can Poetry Matter? Essays on Poetry and
American Culture," visit RLG's RedLightGreen.com:


-- or to purchase a copy go to:
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1555973701/newsscancom/ref=nosim>
Note: We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy
programs.]

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