Steve Rubel posted a risky bet on his personal blog, Micro Persuasion, yesterday, that ‘By January 2014 I will wager that in the US almost all forms of tangible media will either be in sharp decline or completely extinct. I am not just talking about print, but all tangible forms of media – newspapers, magazines, books, DVDs, boxed software and video games.’

While I don’t doubt he’s right that all forms of tangible media will have experienced a sharp decline, I’d differ slightly in my belief that most will continue as niche products – in the same way that vinyl exists for some DJs and collectors. And I’m not sure about the timescale.

Although he makes a compelling point with many great examples of how digital content is becoming increasingly mainstream, I think there’s a tendency to almost imagine one day when suddenly all the printing presses stop, and we all ‘go digital’.

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper. The Hollow Men, T.S Eliot.

Physical products won’t go out like that, despite the predictions I’ve heard since I started in online publishing almost a decade ago. Think of the concept of Entropy, the natural decay of all things – or the erosion of land by the force of the sea. Both are gradual, and yet completely unstoppable physical forces like the changing habits of consumers and the constant innovations in technology.

Yes, many companies, products and industries are in sharp decline, which is likely to be accentuated by the current global economy collapse, and there’s a desperate need for most to innovate new revenue streams. But there are still isolated cases of success in traditional media, and there are still sizeable profits being made, even by declining titles. Will these have been eradicated to the point on non-existence in 6 years? I think that depends on the age of the consumers of those titles, and the likelihood of them continuing to buy physical products from habit or affection.

The End is Nigh - pic by Jason Cartwright on Flickr (CC Licence)

The era of physical content distribution domination for print, audio, film and videogames is coming to an end, but there are still barriers to overcome. Rather than the UK increasing broadband speeds and bandwith caps, for example, the U.S. is instead seeing them introduced. That’s a major barrier to film and videogame downloads, which can be a hefty size to acquire.

But the item for me which is most likely to drive this transformation is missing from Steve’s otherwise comprehensive list. And that’s the smart phone (the iPhone for the sake of argument). For the first time there’s a consumer device which combines digital music, photography, telephony, communication, blogging, applications and almost everything else, and which is easily able to feed Flickr, download from iTunes etc, etc, etc. It provides an attractive and increasingly familiar conduit for digital content which isn’t as imposing as a PC for the non-geeky, and reaches those who don’t spend their working days on a keyboard. On my recent holiday, I cursed my lack of a smart phone when I had to constantly remove the memory card from an old digital camera to upload to Flickr. And when we lacked a GPS, or mobile internet access to look for a location. And the fact I couldn’t access Twitter or my blogs without using a PC old enough to have a floppy disc drive!

Personally I think the physical content carthorse will continue to plod along for a fair while longer – if I had to pick a date out of the air, I’d probably pick 2020 as the cut off point for physical products reaching the very margin of content delivery – but don’t make the mistake of thinking I wouldn’t advise any company to be investigating every alternative opportunity as if they’re life depended on it, because it certainly does.