Read. Learn. Enjoy. Introducing Georgia Today/Education

Dear friends and future readers,

For us the process of learning is so important that we’ve decided to dedicate an entire publication to it. Now this is unusual, actually it is an anomaly when it comes to global trends, because every year, every day, there are fewer and fewer newspapers in print on the planet. News is becoming digital. And that is a good thing because it indicates progress in technology. It is the difference between the world that you’ve grown up in and the one that we (we’re 30-something years old!) have watched change and evolve so quickly. Just imagine this: antibiotics, perhaps the most important medical technology, did not exist until World War II. We were around ten years old when we first heard about the internet.

We marvel at the technology that for so many of you is just normal. We also know that not all of it is a good thing. You see, so much tech, data and sheer information came into our lives so quickly that sometimes we have to take a step back and really talk about what it means for the people we care about the most. Also we want to tell you this: There is power in the printed word, in holding something like this very newspaper in your hands. It means that not just one person wrote their feelings on Facebook or in a Wordpress blog, but that a lot of people- the writer, the editors, the publisher, the designers, etc., all believed in the power of those words too, believed enough to print them.

That is why this article is sitting in front of you right now. We wanted to say “Hello” on paper and to make it official, to connect with you and tell you a little bit about what we are going to do in our new monthly publication, what we hope to do together. This paper is about education, hence the title. Sure, this means that we hope that students are going to read it—we even hope that this may end up in some classrooms. But here’s the thing about being a student, or what in English slang we call “the rub”: It never ends. We think that every human being on earth is still a student. The cleverest people out there already know this, and they never stop learning. We at GEORGIA TODAY are students, too. We may have some grey hairs and remember what life was like before cell phones, but it is for that very reason that we continue to learn.

Each month we are going to bring you stories about people, about technology, about innovative new kinds of business in Georgia and even sometimes about how it all fits into the larger global picture—what fancy people call ‘foreign policy.’ We are going to include an English dictionary at the bottom of the page to explain the words you see in bold, an Info Box to explain about the company or person in the article in more detail, and a Food for Thought box to get you thinking and debating “outside the box.” And we are not going to write long pedantic articles to try and convince you that we are smart. We simply are going to share some exciting stories. We hope that you will interact with us and become more than just readers through Twitter, Facebook and email.

The bottom line (another English term) is that we want to connect with you and to share some stories each month that we find fascinating. Sure, it’s strange to be reading about technology in a printed newspaper, but irony can be a beautiful thing. It reminds us that the world around us is not constructed in binary code: black and white, off and on, right and wrong, one and zero. So if you find yourself reading about technology in a newspaper or about Lebowski on a laptop, we hope it brings a smile to your face and that you know we are smiling, too.

Until next time,

Will Cathcart and Katie Ruth Davies

Editors, Georgia Today/Education