Now the two cost curves have crossed and it's cheaper to make and distribute electronic books than it is to print paper ones. The only thing holding electronic books back now is the lak of cheap, sturdy, portable, high-definition electronic displays. But that will change within a decade. So after five hundred years of business as usual, publishing is about to change, and change drastically. Only Connect We're all caught in a huge yet invisible web of connections, each of us made more powerful by the uniformity and collectivism of shared life.
Computer networks are but the latest strand in that web.
But eventually they may become the most binding of all. The Bloody Crystal Of the ten ships and over a hundred aircraft lost by both sides in the Falklands War, flying robots destroyed more than half. Smart weapons like the Exocet have a better than nine in ten kill ratio against unwary foes. And they're cheap. War is quickly becoming a game only machines can play.