Print Your Own Nano-Newspaper

BERG's Little Printer is a simple but philosophically complex gadget, accommodating both our nostalgia for printed text and our demand for customized media consumption. As this video demonstrates, the printer allows one to print a selection of news items, social media feeds and puzzles onto a narrow, receipt-like strip of paper every day. Users can curate their feeds via smart phone, from partners that include Google, Foursquare, The Guardian, and Nike.

According to an early look at the device from John Pavlus at Fast Co.Design, the length of a printed strip maxes out at 10 inches. Is the printer a playful toy for information-hungry adults, or an omninous litmus test for our ever-shrinking attention spans? Maybe stripping the Internet down to a handful of morsels is a coping mechanism, protecting us from panic-inducing information overload. BERG's CEO, Matt Webb, tells Pavlus:

The act of printing--committing to paper--makes a statement, so you want to be sure that what you print is important. What we concentrate on now is density of information or delight. Great publications are ones you would consult a lot over the day or want to carry with you, so it makes sense to print them. Or exceptional information that prints a large alert when something drastic happens, so you can see it from across the room. Or beautiful images: We've been working with old woodcuts and pen and inks, which look tremendous on the thermal printer.

Read the rest of the piece here. If the video's one million views on Vimeo are any indication, the device has an audience waiting for it when pre-ordering starts in 2012. Maybe the Little Printer's Justin Bieber bangs have something to do with it?

For more videos from BERG, visit http://berglondon.com/.