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Bill Gates on e-books for K-12
January 15, 2006 | 12:39 am
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By David Rothman
“‘Within four or five years, instead of spending money on textbooks,’ Mr Gates said recently about students, ‘they’ll spend a mere $400 or so buying that tablet device and the material they hook up to will all be on the wireless internet with animations, timelines and links to deep information. But they’ll be spending less than they would have on textbooks and have a dramatically better experience.’” – The Age, via Pocket PC ebooks / iPod Watch.
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Comments:
This is interesting talk from a person who’s stated desire is to “rent” the only products that he makes money on. Gates has been for “software subscriptions” for a while now and he has a stated desire to move to a “pay as you go” model of content.
Imagine paying for a book every time you want to read it. Imagine paying by the page for reading a book. That’s what Gates means – and what the large copyright holders want.
On one hand, we would pay less for the books that stink since we wouldn’t have to pay the full price to find out that they stink. But for textbooks and good books, we’d end up paying far more than today.
In my case, under Gates’ vision, my copy of The Lord of the Rings probably would have cost me several hundred dollars.