No publishing technology is eternal

From five years ago, during the “No Flash on the iPhone” era, on the Online Journalism Review:

The controversy over Flash, at the very least, provides journalism educators a teaching moment in which to reinforce the important message that no publishing technology is eternal, and that journalists must be prepared to either train themselves, or seek training, on new publishing tools and techniques throughout their careers.

A good reminder when the whole publishing industry starts to freak out about adblockers. The numbers of internet users using adblockers keeps on growing, hurting the current model of web advertising.

Marco Arment on the matter, in a brillant post comparing the adblockers to the pop-up blockers ten years ago:

The future didn’t work out well for pop-ups. Pop-up-blocking software boomed, and within a few years, every modern web browser blocked almost all pop-ups by default. A line had been crossed, and people fought back.

Worth reading too are Gruber’s comments on the fact that many web ads today are not just innocent banners, but fishy software.

I don’t want to block ads. I want to block garbage JavaScript.

Reading all this, I also installed Ghostery and the results are frightening. Some very common websites score the high-twenties, activating Gods-know-what lines of code. I did not block any ads yet, I am just observing, but what I’m seeing is not pretty.