As I sit in the hospital thinking of the new life about to be brought into this world, I couldn't help but think about the implications technology will have on her life. Yep, I'm so nerdy I think about tech even when my beautiful wife is giving birth, and if your wondering why I'm writing and not doing anything it's because my wife prefers that I sit aside and wait for orders. I shall respect her wishes.

I was thinking about the future of media and the differences between this baby and the first we had almost 4 years ago.  With my first we brought a laptop, DVD's, CD's and Books.  With this one we brought a laptop, an iPod touch, and our cell phones...  In the last four years, we have digitized the majority of our media; we watch movies via Netflix and listen to music on Pandora.



Without belaboring ( unintentional pun) or glorifying an obvious scenario, it's quite amazing that the girl being born today will not understand why physical media ever existed.  It's going to be hard to explain why movies and music used to be delivered via plastic disc or tape or vinyl.  With such questions as, "Why didn't you just download it?" ,"why is it round?", and "You actually drove to a store for that?". I think the most inexplicable question our children will have about physical media is why we paid so much for it.  With the elimination of physical media we will also be eliminating or reducing the large costs associated with creating, distributing, and  giving cuts to middle men, and yes I believe the middle men will get smaller cuts in the future.

The only thing our family has not digitized is books. I'm sure that we will move in that direction at some point, but the market hasn't matured enough to make it worth my while.  We are an incentive driven family and we don't see much incentive in buying a $200 device to buy books at the same price as retail paper back. We buy most of our books second hand at far cheaper prices.  I assume that ebooks will go the same way mp3 has gone and be much more reasonable in the immediate future.  I also expect my children to have fully digitized reading habits in the next five to ten years.

A few other items I doubt my children will understand when they are able to talk with me about it.  Landlines, Purely Gasoline fueled cars, Batteries (they will all be built in), and Lady GaGa.  How are we going to explain Lady GaGa to our wee ones.  I mean seriously!