[CleverClothe]

Originally Posted by SpiderMatt

I really don't think paper books and magazines will become a "niche market" because I think there will always be a large enough consumer market for them. There are advantages to having a paper book or magazine that can't be replicated in ebooks.

And there are advantages to analog audio (many liked the sound), but everything is going digital.

Originally Posted by SpiderMatt

I'm thinking specifically of skimming purposes. It's so much easier to flip through a book or magazine than it is to go through an ebook. Ebook search functions are useful but only if you know exactly what you're looking for.

With decent hardware and decent interface, ebook searching will always be faster than skimming. Once the screen technology is fast enough, you will have the same page flipping speed, but the advantage of hyperlinks and text search.

Originally Posted by SpiderMatt

Being cheap and disposable is another useful feature, whether you think so personally or not. Fifteen to twenty dollars might not seem particularly cheap but it is when compared to a dedicated reading device. People with as much disposable income as Americans are willing to purchase books on a whim to just read and toss aside. The clearest evidence of this is probably bookstores at airports, where many customers are just looking for something to distract them for a few hours during the flight. This last bit may be a non issue when dedicated device get cheaper, though.

A digital file is the most disposable thing in the world! It takes up almost no space, and costs nothing to get rid of.

Originally Posted by SpiderMatt

Also, think of doctor's offices and other waiting rooms around the country. They're probably not going to be setting out an expensive, fragile piece of hardware for anyone to come in and pick up. Magazines will have have their place in waiting rooms until reading on cellphones is so ubiquitous that people stop picking up the magazines. Even then, I have a hard time imagining walking into a waiting room devoid of any free reading material.

The only reason that offices provide magazines is because those magazines are too much of a hassle everyone to carry around themselves. What if you could have your whole movie, music and book library with you in one relatively small device? What if you could instantly buy anything else as well?

As Phogg said, offices will just start offering free Wifi, or perhaps not, but will probably stop subscribing to magazines. Though I think that this will happen more around the time that ebook and emagazine reading really saturates the market.

People need to stop thinking that what we do "now" is how it should always be done. Instead, we need to think about why we do what we do, and what would change that.