The Myth About Print Coming Back and Bookstores on the Rise

[Vertigo]

Irrespective of whether you are talking about generic printed media or books and novels it is very naïve to assume that technology will not push printed media out. Printed media is effectively at it's pinnacle - it cannot realistically get 'better' - technology has no such limitation. There are all sorts of technologies that will improve the digital reading experience whether on dedicated readers or phones etc. Just one that springs to mind is the advances in foldable screens, which will permit much larger formats without compromising portability. The image quality will continue to improve as will speed and software. Technology is nowhere near its pinnacle and so the digital reading experience will continue to improve. It is again naïve to assume that just because something is free it will be of poorer quality. I'd have thought Unix has proven that point very well and there are a number of other pieces of open source software that I use that are free and of excellent quality (Firefox?).

 

[Ray McCarthy]

It is again naïve to assume that just because something is free it will be of poorer quality.

Windows 10, The Gimp. Examples of poorer quality.

30 years experience of computer systems.

I look forward to foldable screens. Though the LCD and AMLED ones are inferior to eInk and mirasol (both also foldable and Philips had folding eInk screen phone over 8 years ago). They still won't give the flexibility of format and readability of paper. There is NO colour screen technology in existence as good as print for colour. Only eInk is a good as paper for text and I think it's doomed.

We need passive lit colour screens that can unroll, fold and be cheaply available from 2" to 60" sizes to replace all print media.

Yes, we are at the pinnacle of printed media. Yes we have not reached the end of development of electronic screens. It's disappointing the lack of products with mirasol and that Amazon has destroyed the eInk competition. They look set to abolish eInk once the Kobo is gone.
Progress with screens has slowed to crawl over the last 10 years. Software progress is worse with GUI design going backwards.

I'd have thought Unix has proven that point very well

You mean GNU, free BSD and Linux, not UNIX, it's not free.

Yes there are some good things and GNU/Linux has finally got as good as NT 4.0 for desktop after 23 years. There are some great free applications. I probably use most of them. Very many more are shoddy or awkward.

I've been using UNIX since 1986 and Linux regularly since 1999. Ubuntu is going backwards hence many now using Mint. Firefox is going backwards and based on Netscape, so had a non-free bootstrap.
Mint is now better than Windows 10, because Windows has got worse!

I'm afraid I'm a bit jaded and depressed by it. I'm pessimistic rather than naive. No doubt eventually there will be only electronic media. Newspapers and novels will indeed be first to go. Independent.co.uk is electronic only.
It's certainly a gradual process driven by reduced costs. No pre-printing or physical distribution. Books unsuitable for electronic media will become more expensive and use POD technology.

EDIT:
Local Tesco selling Kindle at €65
Maybe I should get another as backup and as a way of loaning eTexts to anyone. I know young people that won't read on tablet / phone / computer ... too tiring on eyes.