egafd.com

Some interesting views there. I suspect the physical hard copy of EVERTHING will go before long. Books will probably be next - all you will have is a tablet that you hold in your hand which is about the size of a video cassette, with the screen taking up most of it, and you can download books onto it and read them that way. It really will be a sad day if books eventually disappear. There are also decorative and look nice on shelves in your lounge, just like DVD's are as someone said.

The phasing out of CD's, DVD's, and everything else means: the end of limited edition copies of things, the end of rarities, album, album signings become a thing of the past, limited editions end, cover artwork, and so on. People can retain the old formats - just like how people still own vinyl records, and you can still buy new releases of some things on vinyl in the large record shops - but most things will exist in the non-physical sense and just be downloaded. Us mere mortals can't control what is happening we just have to go along with these new ways of doing things that the corporations tell us.

Max, not to mention all the nice extras you get on DVD's these days.

Everything is so disposable these days Max. Most entertainment is geared towards a quick fix to the consumer.

By the way you can get ebooks already on devices like you described...All part of Bill Gates vision of a world with a paperless office (he should sort out that bloody internet explorer problem then)

The future room will be white and empty except for a sofa and a media centre.

Part of the answer to maintaining dvd's is allowing them to be sent through the post within Britain rather than having to order from overseas. When the royal mail is privatised I think this might change or at least be encouraged to change. Books will never go out of fashion - they've existed for hundreds of years, don't forget that supposedly music hall went out of fashion because of cinema and cinema out of fashion because of video and later dvd, looking at it this way - where is a books competition going to come from. Who wants to have to sit at a pc to read or even to watch porn coming back to the original topic (at last). By the way when i mentioned privacy in my earlier post i wasn't talking about credit cards etc I meant as in going into a licensed shop and paying cash - other than the local cctv - that is totally private. Also i can see how back ups mean you don't lose what you've downloaded but again it's fiddly, time consuming, brain consuming stuff that you shouldn't have to think about. If the dvd player goes tits up then the worst that can happen is you'll lose one dvd.