What will e-readers be like 10 years from now?

[lkmiller]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

Dell had a new laptop at the CES. It is only .6" thick with a magnetic (maglev) keyboard. It is being referred to as a 2 in 1, so the screen must detach so it can used as a tablet.

Yup, 2 in 1's are the new tablet. Some of their keyboards detach, some fold back. With something that thin, I think I'd rather have the fold back style -- it would still probably be thinner than many tablets alone.

[cryptocoryne]

No matter what shiny new tech geegaw you dream up, it ends up sounding like a Zeppelin Airline Fleet in retrospect.

However, I dare to hope that the conformity and lack of privacy (Corporations and FSB/GCHQ/NSA don't love you. Really.) of social media and e-Shops will anger people to the point where they just start turning off and disconnecting. I see the internet as a spent force, like network TV: it will become the playground of home shopping, religious extremists, and snake oil salesmen.

We need something new or perhaps something old.

Most likely, though, we're gonna nuke ourselves by accident and there won't be any (e)readers.

EDIT: I won't feel better if we nuke ourselves intentionally.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by cryptocoryne

No matter what shiny new tech geegaw you dream up, it ends up sounding like a Zeppelin Airline Fleet in retrospect.

However, I dare to hope that the conformity and lack of privacy (Corporations and FSB/GCHQ/NSA don't love you. Really.) of social media and e-Shops will anger people to the point where they just start turning off and disconnecting. I see the internet as a spent force, like network TV: it will become the playground of home shopping, religious extremists, and snake oil salesmen.

We need something new or perhaps something old.

Most likely, though, we're gonna nuke ourselves by accident and there won't be any (e)readers.

EDIT: I won't feel better if we nuke ourselves intentionally.

Do you have a wearable sandwich board sign that says 'The End is Nigh'?

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by lkmiller

Yup, 2 in 1's are the new tablet. Some of their keyboards detach, some fold back. With something that thin, I think I'd rather have the fold back style -- it would still probably be thinner than many tablets alone.

I don't think of tablets with a detatchable soft keyboard/cover (the Surface and its clones) as a 2-in-1. I think of them as very nice tablets.

A 2-in-1 is a one of those laptops where the keyboard can fold all the way back.

That's just me, I guess.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by cryptocoryne

No matter what shiny new tech geegaw you dream up, it ends up sounding like a Zeppelin Airline Fleet in retrospect.

However, I dare to hope that the conformity and lack of privacy (Corporations and FSB/GCHQ/NSA don't love you. Really.) of social media and e-Shops will anger people to the point where they just start turning off and disconnecting. I see the internet as a spent force, like network TV: it will become the playground of home shopping, religious extremists, and snake oil salesmen.

We need something new or perhaps something old.

Most likely, though, we're gonna nuke ourselves by accident and there won't be any (e)readers.

EDIT: I won't feel better if we nuke ourselves intentionally.

Would you care to point to a time in the history of TV or even radio wasn't the playground of salesmen?
For reference, read Betty White's books. They have always sold things on TV.
Do you really think the Price is Right is not just an hour long commercial?

As to the religious: broadcast TV is required to do so many hours of public service to keep their license. Here they tend to pick Sunday mornings.

The home shopping is not new either, even as a kid I remember send just $4.99+$1.99 shipping and handling to PO Box 12345, Somewhere California to get the latest Ronco product.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Would you care to point to a time in the history of TV or even radio wasn't the playground of salesmen?

Early radio and even early TV weren't the playground of salesmen. That came later. It's a big topic and I'm at work, but you can read about the early days of each by spending some time on search engines.

You are thinking of networks and broadcasting.

The internet hasn't fallen completely into the salesmen's clutches yet, but it is on the way.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Early radio and even early TV weren't the playground of salesmen. That came later. It's a big topic and I'm at work, but you can read about the early days of each by spending some time on search engines.

You are thinking of networks and broadcasting.

The internet hasn't fallen completely into the salesmen's clutches yet, but it is on the way.

Hmmmm, TV started in the 1950's. According to the queen of Television, they had to do so many mentions of a product an hour. Martin & Lewis were sponsored by Colgate.
I don't have to read about the early days. When I asked a TV executive why we have ads, I was answered ads are how they paid for the programming.
The internet is not always right.
I will believe people that actually worked in it.
The other guy said Network TV, he didn't say paid TV.
Every show I have seen from the 50's always mentioned a household product or 3.
Westinghouse was a big sponsor.

Now they weren't always commercials as we know them, but products have always been mentioned.

Though even I would admit, there are way too many commercials these days.
Oh and must be nice to have a job that you can play on the internet and get paid for working.

[Deskisamess]

Initially the idea of radio advertising was extremely controversial. An article in the November 1922 issue of Radio Broadcast magazine lamented that "driblets of advertising... are floating through the ether every day" and expressed concern that "The woods are full of opportunists who are restrained by no scruples when the scent of profit comes down the wind."[18] Even though until the mid-1920s a few stations held out against carrying commercials, no other financing scheme proved practical, and by the late-1920s most U.S. radio stations were carrying commercially-sponsored programs.

From here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_advertisement

Early tv shows were live, as were the commercials.

The very first television ad appeared on July 1, 1941 during a baseball game on a local channel in New York. It was a ten-second commercial advertising Bulova watches and cost a mere four dollars, but it completely revolutionized both television and advertising.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Hmmmm, TV started in the 1950's. According to the queen of Television, they had to do so many mentions of a product an hour. Martin & Lewis were sponsored by Colgate.
I don't have to read about the early days. When I asked a TV executive why we have ads, I was answered ads are how they paid for the programming.
The internet is not always right.
I will believe people that actually worked in it.
The other guy said Network TV, he didn't say paid TV.
Every show I have seen from the 50's always mentioned a household product or 3.
Westinghouse was a big sponsor.

Now they weren't always commercials as we know them, but products have always been mentioned.

Though even I would admit, there are way too many commercials these days.
Oh and must be nice to have a job that you can play on the internet and get paid for working.

I think you need to learn your history. I don't have time to go into all of it. But I can tell you the Ed Sullivan Show started airing in the 1940s. So did Howdy Doody.

Also, you are confusing networks and their rules with radio/television. They aren't the same thing. There is no law saying there has to be so many commercials an hour, or any commercials whatsoever.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I think you need to learn your history. I don't have time to go into all of it. But I can tell you the Ed Sullivan Show started airing in the 1940s. So did Howdy Doody.

Also, you are confusing networks and their rules with radio/television. They aren't the same thing. There is no law saying there has to be so many commercials an hour, or any commercials whatsoever.

What does the law have to do with it? The Ed Sullivan either had ads or he mentioned products. Sponsored by: means a subtle ad.
Or excuse me: "and now a word from our sponsor." What would you call it?
Oh and he had a thing against pelvises.

[barryem]

Originally Posted by lkmiller

Yup, 2 in 1's are the new tablet. Some of their keyboards detach, some fold back. With something that thin, I think I'd rather have the fold back style -- it would still probably be thinner than many tablets alone.

I recently got a Lenovo 720 which is a 13" 2 in one with a keyboard that folds back and makes it into a tablet. I wanted to use it for drawing. I've been drawing on a 10" tablet and I've been happy with it but the reviews of some of the Windows drawing programs sounded tempting. And I wanted a small laptop anyway so I got it.

As a laptop the thing is really nice but as a drawing device it needs to be on a table. Sitting in my easy chair, which is how I use my tablet for drawing, the thing is ungainly and inconvenient and heavy and thick I had been saving for a Microsoft Surface when this went on sale so I got it. It was a mistake.

Laptops are laptops. Two in ones with folding keyboards are also laptops. You can use them as tablets and I guess sometimes that's convenient but mostly it's not.

Barry

[barryem]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Early radio and even early TV weren't the playground of salesmen. That came later. It's a big topic and I'm at work, but you can read about the early days of each by spending some time on search engines.

You are thinking of networks and broadcasting.

The internet hasn't fallen completely into the salesmen's clutches yet, but it is on the way.

i read an article 30 or 40 years ago, I think in the magazine Psychology Today, that discussed the Orson Welles "War of the Worlds" broadcast and how it changed the world. One of it's effects was that it convinced the world that people actually listened to radio and that advertising was worth doing.

That broadcast was done by The Mercury Theater on the Air, a radio show with no sponsor. There had been a lot of such shows up till then. They were called Sustaining Shows by the networks because they were thought to enhance the network's reputation and the network paid their bills.

After that the show's name changed to "The Campbell Playhouse", sponsored by Campbell's Soup. Other sustaining shows found sponsors not long after as well.

There had been advertising before that but that's when it became the main thing. So blame Orson Welles. It's all his fault.

Another effect of that show, according to that article, was to convince Hitler, and later the rest of the world, of the value of propaganda.

Barry

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by barryem

i read an article 30 or 40 years ago, I think in the magazine Psychology Today, that discussed the Orson Welles "War of the Worlds" broadcast and how it changed the world. One of it's effects was that it convinced the world that people actually listened to radio and that advertising was worth doing.

That broadcast was done by The Mercury Theater on the Air, a radio show with no sponsor. There had been a lot of such shows up till then. They were called Sustaining Shows by the networks because they were thought to enhance the network's reputation and the network paid their bills.

After that the show's name changed to "The Campbell Playhouse", sponsored by Campbell's Soup. Other sustaining shows found sponsors not long after as well.

There had been advertising before that but that's when it became the main thing. So blame Orson Welles. It's all his fault.

Another effect of that show, according to that article, was to convince Hitler, and later the rest of the world, of the value of propaganda.

Barry

Didn't they announce just once at the beginning it was a work of fiction and IIRC the year was 1937.

[barryem]

In the early TV shows and in the radio shows before them ads were often included within the storyline of the show itself. This was especially true of comedy shows where a friend would drop by and start telling the characters about a new product he'd discovered (which he also had discovered last week) .

The FCC ceased to allow that in the late 1950s, I think. They began requiring that the show break for a commercial and that it not be embedded as part of the story.

Barry

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by barryem

I had been saving for a Microsoft Surface when this went on sale so I got it. It was a mistake.

Every few months I think about buying a MS Surface, but so far I've always talked myself out of it - "maybe next year, but not now".

Based on your experience with the 2-in-1, I'm interested to know whether the Surface still appeals to you or have you now gone off the whole idea of a super-tablet?