In his recent keynote speech to comment on the state of Microsoft, Steve Balmer said “all consumed content will be digital”.  He mentioned it may take one to five years.  I however, can’t imagine this to be true.  It takes years, sometimes decades, for society to adapt to a new format of anything.  Take cars instead of buggies.  Planes instead of trains.  Cell phones instead of house phones.  Wireless internet instead of no internet.  These are just a few examples, but each transition took years before it was fully instituted and accepted.

The one major issue I see with Balmer’s claim is this: digital media, whether newsletters, blogs, websites, streaming video and audio, or regular websites are considerably lower maintenaince than brick-and-mortar establishments.  Hand-in-hand with that is lower costs.  So, yes, I can completely see why we would want to go all digital.  However, there are still hundreds of thousands of people worldwide that do not have stable and consistent internet access.  So, much would be lost in that transition.  In addition, and more importantly, huge numbers of jobs would be lost.  A newspaper that employs 150 people and 25 paperboys could not afford to keep them all on when they transitioned from physical format to the digital format.  This would greatly affect the local economy as well as the national economy.

In their defense, I’m sure Microsoft has done it’s research.  I would hope so, anyway.  I highly doubt I am the first to see any holes in this great idea.  When I say that, I say it with sincerity.  I would love to see more digital content as opposed to physical content.  It would be much better for the environment and more cost effective.  Another thing to think about is that many people will always prefer an actual book with pages compared to a digital copy on a computer screen.

Thoughts?  Comments?