The meaning of publishing, speed, capacity and processing power

Publishing has been defined as a way to make information widely available to the public. Our formerly mechanical world required many preliminary actions, such a typesetting and proofing, which became associated with the meaning of publishing. Electronic publishing makes is possible to make anything available to the world instantly with no preliminary preparation. Under these circumstances, materials can be divided between text posted to the Internet and works published with preliminary preparation. The local loop of the telephone line defines the speed of the Internet for most people. The local loop has lacked the speed to make flipping through pages in books or full motion video available over the Internet. Storage systems for electronic documents have defined large-scale document storage and video storage as too slow, too unreliable, and too expensive to be consistent with the free paradigm of the Internet. The demands for processing power by electronic gaming are opening the way to publish interactive simulations as a means of expression. Increases in speed, capacity, and processing power will add new document types to the meaning of electronic publishing.