It will be interesting to see how this plays out over time. Used to be a generation of kids you were all free-love and pro-dope who then seemed to have gone 180 on all that. Maybe not the best comparison, but the interests and needs of people change as they get older. OTOH I really don't see people raised without a land-line ever deciding they're missing very much, so it goes both ways.
(I'm beginning to think we need to watch middle-aged women to get a real sense of the future.)
I still buy a lot of physical books, but not very often in a physical store. I only buy a few CDs, but those too I get online. That's just where I can find them. CD's, though, are not interesting as objects and do nothing to enhance the interaction with the content. A book, however, offers a set physical, spatial, 3D cues about the content (e.g., that interesting quote was at about the middle of the book, or five pages back).
In a way, vinyl beats digital in that regard; it's been a while, but I recall the way one would interact (so to speak) with a record. Side A; side B; getting up to flip the record. It offered a different kind of connection than a CD or MP3.
I'd like to see the printed page use e-ink or something so that I can get the best of both worlds in a morphing bundle of bound flippable pages holding everything I want to read.
(I'm beginning to think we need to watch middle-aged women to get a real sense of the future.)
I still buy a lot of physical books, but not very often in a physical store. I only buy a few CDs, but those too I get online. That's just where I can find them. CD's, though, are not interesting as objects and do nothing to enhance the interaction with the content. A book, however, offers a set physical, spatial, 3D cues about the content (e.g., that interesting quote was at about the middle of the book, or five pages back).
In a way, vinyl beats digital in that regard; it's been a while, but I recall the way one would interact (so to speak) with a record. Side A; side B; getting up to flip the record. It offered a different kind of connection than a CD or MP3.
I'd like to see the printed page use e-ink or something so that I can get the best of both worlds in a morphing bundle of bound flippable pages holding everything I want to read.