Quote:
Originally Posted by VydorScope
8 Track died, VHS Died, Laser Disk Died, Papyrus Died, and so on... mediums of recording information come and go with time. To think paper books will be around always is likely a mistake. Around in 20 years? I think so. Around in 100? Well I'll be dead and gone and wont care... but probably not any more then 8 tracks are today.
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(Papyrus didn't die, it evolved into pbooks. The better analogy for Papyrus would be the various ebook formats that have fallen out of favour.)
What hastens the death of things like 8 track is the equipment that the end-user needs to obtain to use such products. As demand drops so the cost of such equipment rises out of proportion until it is no longer viable for anyone but specialist collectors. The fact that pbooks need no special end-user technology means, I think, that they will not die out so quickly.
There may still come a time when pbook demand falls so far that print equipment used by publishers/printers becomes more expensive to run, pushing the price of production up so that the cost of pbooks will rise ... and so on. So just as ebooks have taken a jump early in their maturation, so the end of the pbook may dive when it reaches some threshold.
There are some other factors that seems likely to effect the life of pbooks. Those books referred to as "coffee-table" books - big glossy photo books and the like, seem likely to be difficult to replace by electronic means for some time.
... And then there are the various waiting rooms around the world: what will adorn the racks and tables of such rooms in another generation? Will dentist waiting rooms be laid out like the flight-deck of an aeroplane so each patient can read the screen embedded in the head-rest in front of him? Or will paper magazines still be printed for just such purposes? While ever there are some mass printing demands I suspect pbooks will remain available, albeit in an ever more specialist form/volume.