Magazines: then and now

Two years ago, Maria Popova put together this look at magazines past, present -- and future, via tablets. At the time she wrote the piece, iPads were still pretty much a twinkle in techno-geeks eyes. Here's how the piece -- which includes a video history of magazines and tablet demos -- begins:

As big proponents of the power of curated interestingness, we have to admit that despite their umbilical cord to the corpse that is the print world, magazines — the best of them, at least — are one of the finest examples of cultural curation. But in order for this editorial-curatorial model to survive and flourish past print, it has to adapt to the platform-blind content ecosystems enabled by technology, while staying rooted in the behavioral and cultural demands of its audience. So today, we’ll try to contextualize all this by looking at the past, present and future of magazine publishing from three different angles, exploring everything from the digitization of print archives, to the emergence of niche, indie titles, to the publishing potential of the iPad.