Quote:
Originally Posted by DamianJ
I'd say about 8. But yes. No one said it's happening tomorrow. But it will die. And soon. Imagine if I had shown you a modern phone/laptop 8 years ago. You wouldn't have believed it possible. in another 8 years, we are not going to be able to understand why anyone thought it was a good idea to cut down trees, pulp them into paper, print on that paper, cut it, bind it, store it, then distribute it round the world in trucks and planes. People will LAUGH at that idea.
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Good point. When I was right out of high school in 1989 I worked at Radio Shack for about a year and a half. We then sold cell phones. There were two phone available. One big hand held and one that I called the tank phone because it had a huge batter pack and was meant to slide into a bracket in your car. The phones cost $1000-$1500 and the service was around 50cents a minute for ever minute you talked. Now, 20 years later everyone has a cell phone. These phones can do more than the computer I had growing up and are an amazing part of everyday life.
I do think eventually print will die, but it won't happen until the devices that replace them are so cheap that just about anyone can afford it. Sub $300 is a good price, but there are millions who won't buy them and still will shell out a couple of bucks for a magazine. It is the future, no doubt about it and if I were a publisher of books or magazines I would be putting a lot of effort into that type of stuff, but until the devices cost around $50 I can't see them destroying the print market just yet.