New Media: Kung Fu Monkey on Netflix

Here's your essential post to read about the changes to online distribution that are coming: Netflix will win. And with your newspapers, too.

Bullet-points:

• Netflix now gets to stream Warner Brothers movies to their customers, 28 days after the movies have been released on DVD.
  
  
• E-readers (like the Kindle) will be replaced by tablet computers. This totally makes sense, but John Rogers goes on to point out that the Kindle is deliberately a gateway drug, to get people used to the idea of paying for downloading books to a convenient piece of hardware.
  
  
• TV networks will probably be replaced by content-aggregating sites like Hulu, Netflix and the Apple store.

... oh, and Seth Godin speculates about what happens to libraries, when everyone can download any book ever printed whenever they want. His answer: they become training centres, to teach people how to find and use information.

I'd say we're looking at 20 years max until print becomes a novelty rather than the default. 50 years until printed goods become artifacts and souvenirs rather than common-place possessions. And when I actually try to imagine the media-world for a teenager in 2030, I think I'm being way too conservative with those timelines.