Tablets can't possibly save magazines and newspapers

[Commentary] Shafer can't help but applaud the rush of the magazine and newspaper industry to save itself exploiting a new publishing platform. But all the hoopla reminds him of the hype that greeted previous electronic publishing technologies. Publishers spent hundreds of millions of dollars shoveling print content into videotex, audiotex, fax, CD-ROM technologies, and such proprietary online services as America Online, Prodigy, CompuServe, and Ziff Interchange. That's not to say that the tablet has no future. It's just if the past is any guide, the future of the tablet won't look like the prototypes -- any more than Pathfinder turned out to be the future of the Web. It is more likely that some young people at a startup will figure out the highest uses of the tablet form.