michael said:
YouTube was left out. . .
no, i included it. right there. you just missed it.
selling for much more than the $800M whopping figure mentioned below. . . $2.65BILLION. . .
my memory said, and still does say, $1.6 billion. either way, it's a lot of money, no doubt about it. and yes, in terms of a surprise, youtube was that.
Not to mention iPods, iPhones, clones, and iPads. . . .
iphone as an actual _computer_, yes, that too was something that caught people by surprise. they had little sense before that a phone could browse the web, let alone execute programs... but the ipod touch wasn't surprising after that; it was just an iphone without the phone part... and early ipods per se weren't a surprise at all. no indeed, they were originally condemned as being nothing that hadn't already been before. but if you want to put the itunes store in there, especially once iphone apps hit, i'd buy _that_...
You want a five year prediction???!!!
sure! :+)
We will have reached and passed the midpoint of the S curve growth rate of public domain eBooks, but hardly anyone will realize it and they will still be predicting growth curves, huge growth curves, based on the preceding 45 years growth! Just like before THE DOT COM BUST. . . .
that's a general error you've commented on before. you're right that people are incapable of seeing that.
However, eventually someone will realize that half of books in the public domain have already been done and that no way can that growth curve continue because now they only eBooks left to make are those based on hard to find paper editions that are going to be harder and harder to find every year-- and "The Glory Days" of making new public domain eBooks are going to be over forever. . .based on current copyrights as they are being extended.
hard to disagree with that. but one dissenting note is that -- even though some people talk as if the public-domain is now fully digitized (for example, recently brewster kahle) -- there still seem to me to be some rather huge holes there... i regularly turn up empty on searches for books i know exist, but they aren't at google and they aren't at internet archive... i think we're being sold a snow-job.
Therefore, we will see a new wave of cuteness in eBooks and in their cover art, internal illustrations, indices, etc.-- more and more FEATURES because there won't be many new book titles to work on any longer.
yeah, but to me, that's just a bunch of wasted energy.
People, perhaps only the new generations, will figure drive sizes have gotten so large there is no reason to delete.
already there.
Cellphones will reach saturation levels, more features.
already there.
Want more?
yes! please! -bowerbird