The economics and delivery mechanisms for print are changing but the weeklies offer something dailies and the likes of Kindle cannot (yet) in long form articles, attractively and readably laid out on a page which I can merrily dip in the bath, stand on, throw across the room at the TV and beat mosquitos to death with.

Yet I am forever printing out my longer documents for consultation when I begin editing my work. Despite the convenience of cut-and-paste, I discover that I work much better at this stage with a print copy in front of me.

I take that experience to suggest that print will always survive. It is, in many circumstances, irreplaceable. Yes, print and its marketing will change. But we will stil rely on it.

people will then get the personalized content they desire electronically (as said above) on demand and media will be the harbinger of personalized content. eventually we’ll get our cars that way, too–and maybe our medicines. this isn’t science fiction, it’s fact.

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”

Not to mention the umpteen flying car predictions — Human level AI and flying cars always seem to be 20 years away.

How about some shorter term predictions, like will there be a yahoo a year from now?

As for folks (like my girlfriend) who swear that they will never give up paper books I will post back in plenty of time for all to get out of the way of falling debris once the swine are airborne.

Needless to say I disagree with Balmer, and as Erick pointed out, the players in the space will indeed continue to see shrinkage, and unless they move with extreme alacrity toward diversification into online and mobile spaces they will see their revenues shrink as well, some will die but most of the big guys have bank rolls big enough to survive the transition.

Another development that might help the print publications a bit is the emergence of digital paper and the ubiquity of cheap colorful and flexible OLED displays. Imagine a display as thin as a sheet of paper , just as flexible but with a module that allows it to be loaded with the news of the day ….imagine still buying one of these and having it filled up with news before you leave for work every morning wirelessly. I am not talking Kindle here, kindle will feel like carrying around a blackboard written with stories and calling it portable compared to what is coming. These will be full color and have animation and video capabilities (since they will be dedicated to viewing there will be no need for the supplemental capabilities of a smart phone or PDA today) Also they will be rediculously power efficient thanks to those OLED elements. Such dedicated reading devices will be on the market in 5 years and will offer a replacement for the huge sunk costs of traditional print publications (ink and paper) …imagine newsweek, nyt, washingtonpost…moving to distribution on these new mobile and reusable digital formats allowing them to retain a good deal of their market positions today. Yes, hard times will continue to come for many of the print publication houses but the demand is still there for a semi disposable source of printed information and people will muster sufficient demand to make it viable for someone to keep providing it.

There, corrected…

The print model needs to fundamentally change the way they do business. Their sales and ad operations are the last thing they are fixing and one of the biggest problems. Advertisers need to be able to transact business easily, quickly, transparently and with accountability. This can be done today for the most part with simple changes to processes and with electronic insertion orders and ecommerce.