What’s interesting about the shift from an industrial age to a technological age is that we keep inventing new media:  movies, records, radio, television, the internet, and now ebooks—and one of the things that’s most interesting about the invention of a new medium is watching it reinvent itself as it penetrates the culture. 

In the study of mass communication, we see that a new medium always starts out building on the formats of preexisting media.  A couple quick examples:  

As movies grew up, especially in the first decade of sound, they went to novels and broadway plays for source material.  (They still do.  In fact, now they go to comics and TV shows too for ‘inspiration.’)  

As radio spread, radio stations went to records and concerts for material to broadcast.  Radio networks also went to vaudeville for performers and made stars out of Jack Benny, Fred Allen, George Burns, and others.  (This is what killed vaudeville.  You could stay home and listen to live performances.)  Eventually radio started doing drama, mysteries, soap operas, game shows, and sitcoms.  

When television began, it modeled itself after radio.

For more about what technology's history says about ebooks' future, read on!

A couple of years ago, Robert J. Sawyer, Erin Brockovich, and I were all invited to fly to Istanbul and address a conference of several thousand business leaders on the topic of “thinking outside the box.” We weren’t the only ones invited, there were a number of other “out-of-the-box” speakers from all over Europe as well. While there, Sawyer and I were also invited to speak to a group of several hundred bankers. There was a lot of brain-power gathered in those conference halls and auditoriums.  

Whenever I’m invited to give a speech, I always ask three questions. “Who am I speaking to and why did they invite me? What can I say to them that will be useful? What can I say that will make a difference?” (In this particular case, I was pretty sure that they did not want to hear about tribbles.) 

After a few weeks of cogitation on the matter, I had an insight that struck me as profound. The reason why businesses fail is because the operators of those businesses fail to understand what business they’re really in. Because ultimately every business is a service business. 

Read on for more.