Feb 2007
Watch for the changes and try to keep
up…
01 February 2007 11:31
Mike Knowles
Technology is a wonderful thing. Thanks to the marvels of modern science, we can now develop fruits and vegetables that grow better, travel better and taste better; we can adjust the way crops grow by putting different coloured nets over them; we can store produce in a kind of suspended animation using controlled or modified atmosphere; we can track every individual fresh produce shipment using barcodes; we can monitor the temperatures in reefer containers; we can communicate with all points in the supply chain; and, increasingly, we can find out what’s happening in the fresh produce trade by finding news online as well as offline.
In the next year, it is likely that more and more of Eurofruit Magazine’s content will be published onthe web. As far as we can tell, there is strong demand for news stories and feature articles to be read online. It makes sense in many ways. Until screens are the same resolution as printed pages, magazines will be the preferred medium for Eurofruit Magazine, but the technology that exists for publishing on the internet needs to be embraced, not ignored.
Some stories need to be published as soon as they break rather than be held back for the next issue of the magazine. Furthermore, making the pages of the magazine available online on the first day of the month to subscribers on the other side of the world must surely be a good thing. This kind of technology can help a publication like ours stay ahead of the competition, making it more useful, more relevant and more essential.
In our own lives, too, technology has led to empowerment, particularly when it comes to communicating with each other. No more waiting around for illegible faxed sheets to crawl out of the machine and no more having to walk miles to find a payphone when out of the office. Instead, we are more efficient, better organised and more profitable. What did people at fresh produce trade fairs do before they had mobiles? The queue for the phones must have snaked out the door!
But the problem with this arguably Pyrrhic victory over our less sophisticated ancestors is the fact that once you’ve got technology, it seems, you can’t live without it. What’s more, technology will always be improving, and it’s down to all of us to try to keep up.
Technology is a wonderful thing. Thanks to the marvels of modern science, we can now develop fruits and vegetables that grow better, travel better and taste better; we can adjust the way crops grow by putting different coloured nets over them; we can store produce in a kind of suspended animation using controlled or modified atmosphere; we can track every individual fresh produce shipment using barcodes; we can monitor the temperatures in reefer containers; we can communicate with all points in the supply chain; and, increasingly, we can find out what’s happening in the fresh produce trade by finding news online as well as offline.
In the next year, it is likely that more and more of Eurofruit Magazine’s content will be published onthe web. As far as we can tell, there is strong demand for news stories and feature articles to be read online. It makes sense in many ways. Until screens are the same resolution as printed pages, magazines will be the preferred medium for Eurofruit Magazine, but the technology that exists for publishing on the internet needs to be embraced, not ignored.
Some stories need to be published as soon as they break rather than be held back for the next issue of the magazine. Furthermore, making the pages of the magazine available online on the first day of the month to subscribers on the other side of the world must surely be a good thing. This kind of technology can help a publication like ours stay ahead of the competition, making it more useful, more relevant and more essential.
In our own lives, too, technology has led to empowerment, particularly when it comes to communicating with each other. No more waiting around for illegible faxed sheets to crawl out of the machine and no more having to walk miles to find a payphone when out of the office. Instead, we are more efficient, better organised and more profitable. What did people at fresh produce trade fairs do before they had mobiles? The queue for the phones must have snaked out the door!
But the problem with this arguably Pyrrhic victory over our less sophisticated ancestors is the fact that once you’ve got technology, it seems, you can’t live without it. What’s more, technology will always be improving, and it’s down to all of us to try to keep up.
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