The other interesting part of the food pill analogy is when I think of those futuristic projections from events like the 64/65 New York World’s Fair, and then look at the emphasis placed on food today. There is a whole cable channel for food [http://www.foodnetwork.com]. Head chefs in major cities become celebrities. There is probably more discussion of food and good cooking than when Julia Child first made French cuisine something the American housewife could do.

I agree with your analysis of e-books and their future. After all, how many Sony Beta video tape players are still in use.

um, text will “go digital” in order to be discoverable.
at least any text that _wants_ to be “discovered” will.

there’s also ease of duplication and of movement, and
thus, of course, _cost_ of duplication and movement…

at some point, we will finally decide that it is a good idea
to provide educational material to kids in the third world
– and heck, maybe even the kids in our own inner cities –
and we sure ain’t gonna pay to make and ship paper-books.

-bowerbird

As with the Sony Reader (and the Gemstar and…), the key is to look a year out and see whether sales figures are being touted. Not “percentage increase in sales” or “sold out first day” or the like, but hard numbers. Successes are accompanied by numbers. (Well, sometimes less-than-successes are too, but only when idjits like me are involved.)

Best.Futurology.Ever