What happened to printing?
The availability of this additional capacity is encouraging several other developments including interactivity and social networking and the migration of books newspapers and other text media to on-screen rather than on-paper consumption. Just as newspapers were transformed by the availability of photography; and the first magazines evolved to the present colourful media; so the availability of a much richer user experience, and potential for knowledge transfer, is likely to make newspapers and magazines more like television news; with video and sound in place of static images and quotations or reportage in text.
Electronic book sales are already exhibiting exponential growth, albeit off a low base. These permit book readers to share passages with others, to find the meaning and derivation of a word or look up a reference in the course of reading a book. New book are quickly downloaded and tens of thousands of books, including most the classics, are already freely available. The popular readers are lighter and less cumbersome than most books. A single device can replace a dozen entire libraries. The advantages are so profound that a printed book; except those valuable in their own right as collected objects; or so esoteric that they have not been scanned; may soon be as rare as a typewriter or as the music CD is about to become.
New authors and the copyright holders of books still protected will receive royalty payments from an international hosting service/publishing house that mediates and charges for downloads of their book from the Cloud. A number of the more conservative publishers will resist the demise of traditional printing and will not survive these changes.
Superseding the printed page requires a portable electronic device (pad, tablet, book, phone, laptop, e-paper) that can be connected, typically by radio, to the content provider. The Internet, together with the cellular phone network provides this means.
