My daughter and I are flying to Florida later this week, and I’d love to get my hands on one of those nifty new Amazon Kindles to help pass the time on those long travel days, and perhaps a little more time while sitting by the pool. But to be honest, I’m not a speedy reader, and I doubt I’ll get through even one book on this trip, let alone the twenty-or-so books I could buy with the money spent on the $359.00 Kindle alone.
Sure, it’s a cool piece of hardware, and the electronic-ink display is literally easy on the eyes—the best display technology I’ve yet seen for reading large amounts of text… you know, short of the printed page. But the feature I covet most is the ability to wirelessly download one of hundreds of thousands of books, in minutes, from just about anywhere.
That’s the way content should be: totally and completely ubiquitous. And while the book may yet survive as our last physical medium holdout (despite Jeff Bezos’ best efforts), content consumption in general is inevitably moving online. No more CDs. No more DVDs or BlueRay. And in some cities, no more newsprint. Even radio and television broadcasters’ airwave monopoly will collapse as audio and video consumption increasingly shifts to the Internet.
I know there are a lot of people who worry about finding a business model that can support content creators in this new online world, but me, not so much, especially when there are so many smart, creative folks like Jeff Bezos out there willing to risk failure. Yeah, sure, in the short term these new technologies are incredibly disruptive, but then, history tells us that new technologies almost always are.
If we don’t find a viable business model, in the end, I believe, a viable business model will find us. In this, you could say, I almost have faith.
Today’s business model does not rely on building a better mousetrap, but on forcing everyone to buy your piece of crap, whether you want to or not.
I have faith that WorldCorp, Inc.’s™ good old-fashioned interlocking directorates will find a way to make the Internet expensive.
jeff bezos just wants to load us up with more consumer crap. go to a local bookstore with a comfy chair and read a book. visit the library and read some more. support indie bookstores and teach kids to enjoy books not just look at them to get a free pizza.
Did you buy carbon offsets for your flight?
And after the hearty FYVM to #3……
Goldy, the Japanese have had us beat in this market for years. There, downloading ‘novels’ to cellphones has become quite popular, especially with teenage girls.
Amazing what you hear on the BBC……
“The medium is the message.” Geraldo Rivera
To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan: The subject matter of novels is life. The subject matter of movies is books. The subject matter of television is movies. The recent subject matter of movies is old TV series. Then there’s the serialized TV movie, which is like a movie in TV segment episodes.
Then there is the internet — and I cannot decide if it is a cool or hot medium or shares the characteristics of both.
Goldy,
Bezos is an innovator, but the Kindle strikes me as bad model. A better model, damnitall, I suspect, is the cell phone::Ipod::Comcast model.
In that model you get the equpmnt almost for free but pay a monthly for use of the stuff to access content and more for certain content.
Comcast, ATT, Apple .. dems da smart folks!
In re the hardware, it seems to me that Kindle is a nitche product that will poof as netbooks come into their own.
I predict, within one year, Sprint or ATT or Apple or Comcast, will offer a VOIP enabled netbook for ~~ $200 with a two year contract for say $35. Access to certian content, eg the Seattle PIT will be basic for regional subscribers. Books will be charged at Amazon rates. Seervices like HBO, etx will be avail either b y cable or by Netbook and the netbook will control the cable.
All in color!
re 7;: Right…. and there will be a secondary market for cool looking microscopes to see the info.
People will not only look schizoid while appearing to be conversing with themselves, they will also be functionally blind because of the enlargment lenses they will be forced to wear.
My understanding is that iTunes does NOT have a fixed-price subscription model. Zune and Zune Store do.
and re: 8, we’ll all be reading while driving using heads-up displays, until they outlaw it.
The same thing can be said about government education.
No school vouchers, no choice.
Only unless you are rich and send you kid to private school to keep them away from wrasslin coaches like you.
What about the 26-year old former Pentecostal pastor by the name of Joshua DuBois that obama picked to head his faith-based initiative.
During the election here’s how the left wing media treated palin for belonging to a pentecostal church…
Pentecostalism is one of the fastest growing branches of Christianity in the world, and the Assemblies of God is one of the largest Pentecostal denominations in the country, claiming 1.6 million members. Pentecostals are generally characterized by a strict adherence to moral codes–no tobacco, no alcohol, no social dancing, no sex outside of marriage–and by their belief that the Holy Spirit bestows upon some the gift of “speaking in tongues,” a reference to Acts 2: “And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues.”
Yet another example of the double standard.
It’s good to see that in these terrible economic time goldy is considering buying a kindle.
re 10: That’s the same kind of ‘choice’ you offer commuters when they want rail service. You claim it can’t be done because providing a choice would limit their choices.
I do not understand why “Private” schools need public money. And you want it ALL. ALL, say, $9,000 per student going to the “private” school.
Let’s see, in a two child family, that family pays $18, 000 a year to educate their children? I think not.
Fine. You can have your voucher system. Only the actual money that the family pays. Because, after all, the rest of the money is some other taxpayer’s dime, and you would need to contact each and every one of them to get their consent to use the tax money — on a case by case basis.
re 11: Obama is just placating the ‘tards — of which you are one.
Or, differently stated, in tongues: “Bibbledy bobblidoody persicamoni squat.”
God made me do it. Praise Jesus – or, should I say: “wacawaca moley whoopidoodoo.”
You are just a fruitcake, bro.
We put our kids through Catholic grade school, and one of them through Blanchet. The other was given a choice between Nathan Hale and O’Dea, and picked the former because he decided he was more interested in computer graphics than he was in chemistry. All the while, and ever since, we’ve been paying our taxes to Seattle, the county, the state and Uncle Fed, with the understanding that some of that has helped pay for other peoples’ kids’ education.
Now that our children are grown, in addition to all those taxes, we’ve also been contributing to the Fulcrum Foundation to help some other people’s kids afford to go to Catholic school, if that’s what’s best for them.
I’ve never, ever begrudged what I’ve contributed to education, for all sorts of obvious reasons.
I’d sure like to see more of my taxes go to that purpose, than to blowing people up.
11 No, Marvin. The media simply reported that whenever Palin opened her mouth, what emerged was at best nonsense, and at worst shameless hate-mongering. Whether or not that came from her religious convictions isn’t particularly relevant, but it made her in the eyes of the majority of sane Americans a poor choice for being a heartbeat away from the Big Red Switch.
Back on topic –
#1 has it in a nutshell; it’s the cost of delivery. Content doesn’t really care how it’s delivered.
If I was a betting man (oh yeah, I am) I would keep a close eye on the other digital airwaves for now, TV and radio. For the broadcasters it’s like cable, without the middleman.
@8. headlesslucy spews:
You need to look at what is happening in the real world. The cost of creating a netbook is well within the costs of a cellphone. As for the size of the screen, my favorite newspaper now, The Economist, is not much bigger than screen size for a netbook and the potential for the netbook to offer video and links is awesome.
The bottm line is that NOONE would buy a desktop box if they has to pay $500. The rental model simply works better. Comcast already makes bug bucks this way so why wouldn’t they also want to own the Seattle PIT too?
re 17: What does Peter Noone have to do with it? Herman’s Hermits is so yesterday.
If you know what newspaper you read, you know more than Sarah Palin does.
I’m with #2
I looked into getting a Kindle, it’s a very cool little widget. But, it is also a way to be tethered to Amazon 24/7. Despite all the hype about what Kindle is and can do, in the end I saw it as a one-to-one marketing tool more than anything and gave it a pass. I’ll stick to the library and used bookstores (buying used through Amazon included.).
I read five or six books a month and spend less on books in a year than the purchase price of a kindle.