Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/12/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Copyrighted DVD's however cannot be duplicated, or so I understand. Before you answer "So I'll get another one" check out how rapidly most photo books go out of print. Then again, how long do books last? I have, and have seen, books from the 50's and earlier which are significantly yellowed. Oh well, live for today. - -- Nick Hunter - ------------------------------------------------------------------ Nick, I'm assuming that sometime before the turn of this century digital will level off and become a stable technology, as the electrical and automotive industries did. There's no doubt in my mind that OS's will converge or disappear with JAVA, and improvements will be marginal, not revolutionary. The distinctions between an Apple and a Windows computer will disappear. Software will become universal and any application will open a document in any other. The one great advantage of digital is its economy of scale. Prices are constantly either coming down or buying much more power and capacity. All these factors will favor an electronic publishing industry that will expand beyond the computer. Very cheap devices will play DVD's and bookstores will stock them as tho they were books. Most of the paperbacks I bought at school are no longer readable. So they're republished. There won't be a distinction in DVD between paper and hardbacks. Already Encyclopedia Brittania has ditched its paper edition. I believe it's only available now in CD. Most of the references works will be in DVD. I got rid of my 24 volume encyclopedia for Microsoft's Encarta. I use other references from AOL. So an entire segment of the publishing industry is no longer paper. The other shoe will fall in the publication of photographic books. That, IMHO, is inevitable. While on the subject, there is a vast and unbridgable difference between mass publishing a photograph and originating a bona fide print -- creating it from a negative. I don't think digital will replace film for that reason. Bob