With electronics and the internet so prevalent in this day and age what lifespan do you give traditional print media. Not really talking about books since I believe they'll be around for quite a while to come - more talking about magazines and news papers. With news so easily available everywhere online and for free what incentive is there to keep buying print newspapers? Obviously the providers will keep making them as long as they keep selling but surely their days are numbered. Maybe it's just the later generations who still read print but enough that it stays afloat? Maybe some people just like a physical copy more? What do you think.

Then there's magazines and they're a completely different game. With some many forums and communities and content sources around the place you can easily get a steady stream of high quality, relevant (and often original) content related to whatever you want. How long do speciality magazines have left? You know the ones, those that you see in news agents. One issue a month full of all sorts of stuff about one specific topic like bikes or cars or fishing.

Is there any benefit to these (other than personal preference/anecdotal)? I guess they can used when there is no internet connection but even then pages and content can be cached etc etc and more and more people have internet while out and about anyway. Share your thoughts.

This thread is part of my initiate to start some non terrible (sorry but it's true) threads in offtopic that will hopefully contain some actual discussion. Don't shit it up.

I'm thinking that once the people who grew up only with print media die, there'll be no reason to keep producing it. It's a generational thing. The print forms are kept around for the convenience of the non-digital generations. Once they're gone, there'll be no reason to continue wasting money producing physical versions of their products. We're only becoming more and more connected to the digital world. 30 years down the line, when this trend is further along its asymptotic curve, it's hard to imagine this future will contain the traditional forms of print media (unless it becomes cool/trendy/nostalgic, like LPs and record players).

It's old vs new and once the old die, the new becomes the standard. You can extrapolate this dynamic to other variants of social change as well (religiosity will decrease, tolerance will increase etc.).

They either adapt, or they die. Magazines and Newspapers have to become a unique experience that's worth paying for, or they will all slowly die out. As to exactly how they do that? I don't know, but they will have to if they want to survive.

I disagree, print is still superior in a number of ways. Firstly it's not dependant on power usage. Not a big plus in today's world, but definitely a plus. Secondly print display quality is VASTLY superior to electronic display quality. For example print can display true blacks, print density is usually 10x the density of electronic displays, print can be read in full sunlight in full color, not even CRT halation can emulate the continuous nature of ink. Lastly it's much easier to multitask with books than with monitors, even if you have 3, 6, 100 monitors, it's still probably going to be easier to manage books.

In order to counter these problems we need vastly superior display technology, vastly more powerful computers, and much more efficient multitasking than even virtual desktops, multiple monitors, or TWM can offer (which would likely be only be doable with VR tbh).

Completely agree with this. If you surveyed a group of kids/teens in the USA, I bet most of them say they read print media more than they do electronically. Print media is just more convenient, and until eBooks reach that point, I don't think much will change. I also agree with the quality of the picture. Get some IPS eReaders that don't cost $500, and I will gladly hop aboard the train. Until then, I'll keep buying paperback.

You guys don't think the technology is going to get better as it becomes more ubiquitous? You're making predictions about future scenarios based on current technologies.

Let's also remind ourselves that this topic isn't about books vs eBooks, it's about the future of newspapers and magazines.

Display technology has been practically stagnant over the last few decades. The critical components needed for books to be obsolete (color, blacks, density, usage in sunlight, non-discrete) have barely improved in maybe 20 years (actually some stuff you could even argue that some stuff has regressed namely colors and blacks).

Yes, at some stage when we have infinitely good technology books will be obsolete as such, but how can you even predict that? Your guess was based on "when those who grew up with books all die", but I disagree with that, you need the technology to be there. If it isn't then people will keep using books simply because they are superior in many ways to display technology.

But don't forget that even today many "obsolete" technologies are still in use - heck, for 99% of uses print is already obsolete, you could already move it to that category! Even if we were able to get print quality images on electronic displays, there is absolutely no guarantee that books would ever fall out of use.

You're still talking about books. We're not talking about books (I think you know that, but you're just fucking with me).

Uh... you are joking me right? Displays have improved DRAMATICALLY over the last three decades, more so than ever before, so I don't know what you are talking about there specifically.

As for 'books' Ele, I think that just comes with the title of the discussion, and I think it is an important topic to bring up.

Sure, it's an important topic, but since Solax indicated in the OP that he wants us to discuss newspapers and magazines, that's what I've been sticking to.

Bringing up the current technological limitations of eReaders muddies the waters when one commentates on the future of newspapers and magazines (since nobody's using an eReader to get their newspaper stories - they go to the news websites).