Josh Quittnor has a very good article posted on CNN about the iPad and the future of reading:
“The more I thought about it, the more I decided there was good news for the evolution of the publishing industry here — and better news. The good news is that 12-year-olds, just like their parents and their parents before them going all the way back to the publication of the first magazine in 1731 (the year Charles Darwin’s grandfather was born), still enjoy the medium. But they want it delivered in an exponentially more useful way.
“Raised to expect instant, sortable, searchable, savable, portable access to all the information in the world, these digital natives — tomorrow’s magazine subscribers, God and Steve Jobs willing — could well become the generation that saves the publishing industry.”
In the article, Quittnor addresses five key questions about the future of reading and the advent of tablet computers, including whether people will be willing to pay for online content, advertising and whether reading is dead. (No, it’s not. “Isn’t the idea of a magazine irrelevant in the atomized, buy-the-single-not-the-album world? If that were so, we’d expect to see fewer people reading magazines. But according to the Magazine Publishers Association, 174.5 million people paid to subscribe to magazines in 1970; that number has steadily and consistently risen over the years, to 324.8 million as of 2008.”) I recommend you check it out.
