Posted July 07, 2011
For discs I expect an end in the next 20 to 50 years (note that in my opinion there will be other transportable media, though, but the retail system will quite die out in favor of companies that send on order what can't be downloaded - only basics will stay like supermarkets), for books in around 50 to 200 years. I think every human will have easy access to online banking by then (the VeriChip will fail btw but there are other security methods).
However I think that two issues will become very important. One is ownership. We should actually also legally allow the "ownership" of a copy of a media content (like a song or a game or a book). I mean that there should be no time limitations or personal bindings, i.e. you can resell them or pass them on. Also free (open source) players should be available. For interactive media like multiplayer games there will obviously be problems and also software in general requires operating systems... so software has additional problems, but books or music are pretty straight forward. I hate the amazon kindle that can delete content on its own. That is unacceptable!
Connected to this issue of ownership is how to verify that you are an owner? How can you be sure that something belongs to you, if it is not physically present, if everything is in a cloud and you have only an access key? You must trust the system, but such things should not be built on trust but on open, verifiable, transparent ways. I guess there is no ultimate solution because electronic systems will always be more easy to manipulate, but you said there are other better ways. So I would be interested to get to know them.
Post edited July 07, 2011 by Trilarion
