On 1/26/2012 12:17 PM, pabitra saha wrote:
>
>
> Old things do not vanish but just fade away.
> Where did pagers or film based cameras go?
> Horse drawn buggy is still there but it is a miniscule fraction of
> transportation.
> May be an Ibook reader costing less than $100 with full set of books
> from K-12 will be cost effective.
That's definitely true -- such a device, if it were actually to be
produced and were actually indestructible at such a price, would be
wonderful and would probably begin to make inroads into the
paper-textbook world.
Pagers are still widely used (I know a lot of doctors who still use
them) and film cameras are still used by many professional
photographers, but I get your point about how less common they are.
I wonder if the text-book industry will go for such a device, however.
A printed textbook which now costs the school district $50-$100 yet only
costs $10 or less to print is a huge profit-engine. Electronic books
which can be sold with the device for $100 will eat into that huge
profit margin.
Anything's possible and I certainly won't deny that your concept may
well become reality. However I've seen how tough students are on
textbooks, the paper kind that if dropped multiple times still continue
to be legible, and I have yet to see any electronic device which can
survive the same amount of rough handling and keep working.
But they're a whole lot more reliable and able to take more kicks these
days so they may one day actually be able to survive a 10th grade hall
fight. :-)
--
David H. Bailey
dhbailey@davidbaileymusicstudio.com
