Physical Books – Dead in 5 Years?

From TechCrunch today reporting on the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA.

Nicholas Negroponte: The Physical Book Is Dead In 5 Years

A panel of Bill Joy, Kevin Kelly, Nicholas Negroponte, and Willie Smits were being interviewed by CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo.

Negroponte had the big soundbite:

“The physical book is dead, according to Negroponte. He said he realizes that’s going to be hard for a lot of people to accept. But you just have to think about film and music. In the 1980s, the writing was on the wall that physical film was going to die, even though companies like Kodak were in denial. He then asked people to think about their youth with music. It was all physical then. Now everything has changed.

By “dead,” he of course doesn’t mean completely dead. But he means that digital books are going to replace physical books as the dominant form. His argument is related to his One Laptop per Child Foundation. On those laptops, he can include hundreds or thousands of books. If you think about trying to ship that many physical books to the emerging world for each child, it would be impossible, he reasons.

“People will say ‘no, no, no’ — of course you like your libraries,” Negroponte said. But he cited the report that sales of books for the Kindle recently surpassed sales of hardcover books.

“It’s happening. It not happening in 10 years. It’s happening in 5 years,” he said”.

Well, there it is – one laptop and thousands of books per child. Not necessarily a bad thing . . .

This isn’t out of the realm of possibility or probability. It is a chronological / timing issue. I don’t think anyone can argue that the format mix is changing. The debate is what shares each format will have in the end AND if the pie is getting bigger overall. (Much like entertainment formats grew the market although there are/were many different transitional formats like tape, CD, DVD, vinyl, wax and streaming . . .). Then again, some major format may ultimately challenge the paper dominance of the past 500 years and dominate in the future.

Stephen