Apple recently made their announcement about the iPad, a new market competitor for Amazon’s Kindle. The iPad has a ton of amazing features and with all the hype will no doubt give Amazon a run for their money. iPad is going to provide its users many cool features that the Kindle won’t, for example web browsing, games, music and digital media, while the Kindle was designed to help boost Amazon’s sales of books and provide a more easily accessible library. We don’t know yet what Amazon plans to do to counter the competition.
Aside from the recent innovation in digital media with the iPad and the Kindle, we have a for a long time made use of digital music and mp3 players, such as the iPod, and we have also begun to take advantage of streaming digital media with the use of websites like Hulu and services like Netflix, not to mention, anyone can easily download all the movies and music and books they want right from the internet. Also, technology allows new devices, such as Samsung’s 3D LED TV, Xbox, and PS3 , to take advantage of streaming all the same media. Xbox Live even offers its users the ability to download full games right to their console. And no one can forget the advancements being made to digital storage capacities, we can easily have several terabytes of storage and then some.
With today’s technology changing the way we interact with digital media, now especially with books and literature, one of many questions remain: “What is going to happen with all our libraries and books?” I ask this question because it becomes very clear to me what our future holds for us in the way of digital media. I see in the future all of our books, CD’s, DVD’s and software no longer sitting on shelves. And I envision that all of the libraries in upscale houses will disappear leaving only one small shelf hanging on the wall, and sitting on that shelf will be a device similar to that of a Kindle with just one soft-white LED light shining down on it.
Further picturing this in my mind makes me wonder if all of our physical paper books will go the way of Fahrenheit 451? Are public libraries going to start loaning Kindles and iPads to the general public (talk about overdue fees) or, are they going to allow people to rent these devices for a small fee and take them home? What will happen to all of our libraries when these devices become so affordable that anyone and everyone owns one? Ha ha I can see it now, all the kids walking into school and their teachers handing them out a Kindle containing all of their textbooks for that years courses.
At the rate in which technology is advancing and the ever increasing popularity of digital media one must ask these questions. I’ve only ever seen few people on any given day walk into a library, a bookstore, or even a music store. And going down the road further, if the future does hold all of this for us, one must think about what’s going to happen to all of our book stores and and music stores.
Even if all of these stores like FYE and Borders started selling merchandise online to continue maintaining business, it wouldn’t last very long. People go to these stores because they are out shopping, or they may go to one instead of the other because of distance or price. But unless web surfers encounter intersections, slow surfers, and accidents, I highly doubt that anything but price will be a driving factor in the competition for this type of business on the internet. Mainly this point is because anyone can buy all of this media so cheap on the internet that, unless either the prices were to sky rocket to allow for competition or the media was offered for free, we would only base who we buy from on how great their website looks or which name we like better.
These advances in this technology make me wonder what will happen to all of these businesses, and if they will still be around or will we see thousands and thousands of more jobs in the future lost because of the accessibility of this data. When you picture it like this you really tend to wonder what will happen and what everything will be like in the future. I hope other people have thought the same way or asked the same questions. I also hope someone out there has an answer to the questions or who knows may someone just developed a business plan based off these questions. Any ideas or feedback that you may have would be awesome so feel free to leave a comment below.
just sayin
Besides, I am glad book stores now have to put a little effort into their business…other than charging $25 per book
I have thought the same thing myself