It was one of those golden sunny afternoons. Alice was sitting on the river bank looking over the Rhine towards the vast Messe centre which in a few weeks would be home to Drupa 2016. She was considering this, leafing through a preview of the show and the wonderful technologies that would appear there, when a White Rabbit with pink ears ran past her.
This was not so remarkable in itself, except that the White Rabbit was consulting its iPad and muttering to itself “Oh dear I shall be late.” At the time the talking rabbit did not bother her, but this was a rabbit using an iPad and that piqued her interest and she resolved to follow the creature to ask how it had come to learn the touch screen interface and what apps might best suit a rabbit.
She was just in time to see the White Rabbit disappear down a large rabbit hole and in a trice Alice followed and found herself falling down a very deep well. For some reason she was not concerned. A fall never harmed anybody she thought, it was always the landing at the end that did the damage.
She decided it might be better not to land. As she thought this she looked at the walls of the well. There were cupboards of discarded technology: at first it was metal type, then glass slides of Berthed fonts. Next came hundreds of floppy disks in a variety of sizes, mag tapes, optical memory storage then thousands of CDs and lastly USB drives piled so high that when she plunged into them, they scattered to all sides.
Alice was not at all hurt by the landing and wondered at the mess of the countless USB sticks now surrounding her. She picked one up. It had Kodak printed on the side. It was a press pack. Another had Kodak printed on it as did the third and the fourth. They were all press packs. But there was no way of telling which belonged to which event. “That is not very useful,” Alice thought to herself.
Nevertheless she shoved one in her pocket as she set off down a long passage in pursuit of the White Rabbit, which was increasingly starting to resemble Andy Tribute. “I thought he had retired to Cornwall to prevent members of the local golf club consuming excessive amounts of alcohol,” Alice said rubbing her eyes.
“Oh my eyes and whiskers,” said the Tribute Bunny, “I shall be late for my presentation on the future of the printing industry. They need to hear all about Xerox and personalisation, otherwise…” Alice did not discover the otherwise because the Tribute had disappeared around a corner and when Alice got there she found herself in a large room with numerous doors on either side.
They were labelled with cryptic messages like Waterless Litho; Keyless Printing; High Quality Flexo; Direct Imaging Presses; Calibrated Fount Printing; Electrophotographic Imaging; DicoWeb; DicoGrav and countless more. On a table in the centre of the room was a golden key, which Alice took. “These doors all lead to the future of printing, but they are all locked,” said Alice having tested the key on each in turn.
It was then she noticed a much smaller door that had escaped her attention before. It was labelled Letterpress and to her surprise, the lock turned and the door opened. Beyond she could she was some kind of garden, all bounteous with birds singing and butterflies flitting among the flowers, a veritable Eden she mused, remembering lessons at school.
“If only I were small enough I might pass through,” she thought. She returned to the table and found a small bottle there with a label, printed in very high quality with foil blocking and spot varnish on an opaque white applied by flexo on a clear film. “This must have been printed on that new Gallus DCS340 hybrid label press,” she said triumphantly, pulling the cork and taking a sip.
Almost immediately she found herself shrinking and to her delight realised that she could now pass through the little door. When she got there, however, she realised the key was still on the table, now well beyond her reach.
Instead there was a small box with a slice of cake. “It’s been a long time since print has been able to have its cake and eat it,” she said. “This might be stale.” But opening the box it wasn’t so quickly she ate it hoping to become bigger and so retrieve the golden key.
And bigger she became, bloated in fact until the whole room was filled with Alice. “Oh dear,” she wailed, “I have become like Polestar, vast and unable to escape. I don’t want to be commoditised!” She remembered she had put the bottle in her purse and taking a sip she found herself shrinking again. This time she grabbed the golden key as she passed the table and held on to the cake so that once through the door she could return to normal size.
The Letterpress door opened again on to the beautiful garden, but as Alice passed through instead of a land of milk and honey, the garden proved to be a projection of a non existent past rather than a viable future. “I must find the Rabbit again, he will know what to do,” she said. And with that she set off down one of the paths out of the garden.
Rounding a corner she came across a queer looking bunch of creatures, a Canon, an Indigo, a Xerox, a Ricoh among them. They were squabbling about which was the best for digital printing. “It’s me,” piped the Lumejet, a strange little creature who was ignored by the rest of them.
“I know how to decide: we must have a caucus race,” said the Indigo, which was clearly the most senior of those present. “Ahem,” said Xeikon, “I’m just as old. We should have a caucus race.”
“What’s that?” asked Alice, not out of curiosity but from a feeling that someone should say something. “Well we mark out a course and we all start running until the end,” said the Indigo. And with that all the digital presses began looking here and there in all kinds of directions, spewing different samples, until 30 minutes later the Indigo stopped.
“Race is over,” he said. “Who has won,” asked Alice. “Everyone has won of course,” said Ricoh. And they all started cheering and hugging each other, leaving Alice to wonder what she should do next being no nearer to understanding the future of printing.
“I can help you there.” Alice turned round quickly but could see nobody. “I’m up here,” the voice said again. This time she looked up and saw in a tree a rather odd looking cat. It was grinning at her. “I’m Benny, the Nano Cat,” it said. “You are looking for the future of printing and I can show you.” “How did you know I was looking for that?” asked Alice, as if a talking cat in a tree were the most natural thing in the world.
“It’s because everyone is looking for the future and only I have the secret,” Benny went on. “But you will have to deposit something with me to find the answer.” Alice began searching her purse and pockets and when she looked up again Benny the Nano Cat had vanished, all except his endless grin and with a pop that disappeared as well.
“I wonder if he really did have the answer,” Alice said as she continued walking along the same twisting path. She stopped at a junction wondering which way to turn. One sign pointed to Litho, the other path was painted with a sign that stated Inkjet. “What does that mean?” she pondered.
She must have been speaking out loud for someone, or something said: “Who wants to know?” Alice looked up and into the eyes of a very large caterpillar sucking on a hookah with some very fragrant smoke curling upwards from it. “I’m Alice,” she stammered. “Do you know what the sign means?”
“That depends,” said the caterpillar, “on who is asking. Are you a supplier or a provider?” And it peered through a pince-nez at the small girl in front of it. “You see, I’m the Consultant and the answer to the question depends on who is asking it. If you are a supplier I will tell you that the future is all about inkjet. But if you are a provider, your future is going to be about litho for a good while yet.”
“I think sir, that I might be a provider,” said Alice. “We must check,” said the Consultant Caterpillar. “Here, suck on this distorted reality potion.” And it passed the hookah to Alice while it prepared a lengthy PowerPoint presentation. “Where do those figures come from?” Alice asked at the midway point, “They look very impressive.”
“We have a special formula which we cannot share with clients under any circumstances,” said the Consultant. “And then we share our statistics with each other, combining this with the effect of the distorted reality mixture results in a really impressive but absolutely meaningless predictions.”
This is what the Consultant Caterpillar said, but all Alice heard was “I am immensely clever, so believe everything I am telling you.” When she woke up the Caterpillar had gone and so too had the signs. She tried to remember what she had been told but it no longer meant anything. She looked again at the paths and decided on the right hand one. Shortly she heard the sound of loud arguments from the glade ahead.
There was a large table spread for tea, sandwiches, jam and cakes with enough cups and saucers for a great deal more guests than could possibly turn up. At the top was a Mad Hatter, squeezed alongside was a March Hare and between them a sleepy Dormouse.
“Would you like some wine?” the Hatter asked. “No alcohol allowed,” said Heidelberg Hare, “You know the rules KBA!” This was directed at the Hatter. “No alcohol at the litho party,” he continued. “No alcohol,” the Hatter repeated. “Eh, what was that,” the Dormouse said stirring in its sleep. “Quiet Manroland!” both the others said together.
“What is happening here?” Alice asked, “What are you celebrating?” “It’s the future of printing party. Everyone is welcome, provided they make litho presses!” said the Hatter. “We have inline quality measurement and LED UV.” “You might have,” muttered the Hare. “We have Inpress Control.” “What have I got?” said the Dormouse. “No idea,” answered the others in unison as the tiny creature dropped off to sleep again.
“Who are all the chairs for?” Alice asked. “For all the printers in the world, of course,” said the Hare. “They all love us you know.” “I’m not so sure,” said Alice. “Inkjet is coming, the Caterpillar told me, especially something called webfed inkjet, and then I met Benny the grinning Nano Cat who said he knows the future.”
“Rubbish! All of them. Only we have the Workflow,” declared the Hare as he leapt on the table and began to dance. The Hatter and Dormouse joined him and they began spinning faster and faster until it made Alice quite dizzy to work out which was which.
She decided to walk on, and passing through a gate in a large hedge found herself on a beautifully manicured lawn where a game of croquet was underway. In place of rolled up hedgehogs and flamingo mallets, the players held the clamp section of a hand fed binder which fired off perfect bound books. “Should have used PUR there,” said the King of Hearts to the Queen. She shuddered in anger. “Who gave me digital print to make a book from? Off with their heads!”
“Aren’t books finished?” Alice inquired politely. “Of course they’re finished,” shouted the Queen looking down her long nose at the inquisitive girl, who had become quite bold thanks to her experiences over the course of the day. “How do you think the pages are held together?”
“I meant aren’t books being replaced by e-readers and digital titles, your majesty?” Alice said.
“Of course not! Not in this place, printed books will never be replaced. Never,” she shouted her voice rising to a new pitch. “Seize her. Off with her head!!”
“Oh dear oh dear,” says the White Rabbit, who had quietly reappeared to nobody’s great surprise. “She’s lost it now.”
“I told you I had the answers,” said a voice which became a grin and materialised into Benny the Nano Cat. “Come with me and I will show you.”
“No, you are all mad, the lot of you. Nobody knows what’s going to happen to printing,” she shouted as she dashed for what she hoped was the way out. It was. She raced down the stairs and onto the U78 tram to Dusseldorf Hauptbahnhof. Behind her pandemonium reigned as Drupa 2016 came to an end.
Alice found herself inside a long tunnel…
