I see that New Yorker Magazine just did something very nifty: The Complete New Yorker Portable Hard Drive. Although having it online as a subscription service would be great, too, this is an awesome thing to have it if you want to read past articles, search articles, or just relax by reading stuff from the past — recollections or articles friends have pointed you towards.

Of course, I’ve been waiting for something like this for a long time, but not just for the New Yorker. No, what I would love to see is Analog (nee Astounding) and other SF magazines provide their old issues in a digital format. I do realize that there’s some level of difficulty in doing so, what with getting rights from the various authors, scanning in art, entering all the text, etc. However, I’m sure there are enough fans out there that they’d help do most of the heavy lifting and provide it back to the various owners of the rights gratis, ala Wikipedia.

Imagine if you could access, whenever you wanted, entire issues of Analog/Astounding, IASFM, Worlds of If, Galaxy, F&SF, etc.! You could simply ask to read stories by the likes of Larry Niven whenever you want, as opposed to finding that old paperback in your basement.

And to be honest, I don’t really want to have a rack of disks with all these magazines. I’d rather simply subscribe to them, at a reasonable price. What most media companies are failing to understand is that what people want is convenience. It’s what I want. I don’t want to manage information. In fact, I would prefer to simply have access to media whenever I want/desire. The software exists — or can be easily created — that will allow for artists to be properly compensated. It doesn’t take a genius to realize computers offer the ability to know what someone is reading/listening to/watching and then store that in what amounts to an accounting system, fully auditable by the artists. Thus, if I listen to a lot of The Church the system can ensure that they get compensated accordingly. A properly defined, well run system would satisfy a lot of needs — plus digital distribution is much more environmentally friendly than shipping plastic disks and containers everywhere.

It does have to be simple and convenient to use. Take iTunes, but with subscription download feeds. You can burn the music to CDs, if you want, but most people wouldn’t. They’d download them to their iPods, sure, but the artist would be compensated by the download process. Besides, what’s the life expectancy of a burned CD anyway? A few weeks? And how many folks use CDs anymore, anyway?

I know some folks love to “own” stuff. But when I look at all the junk I’ve accumulated over the years anyone who can offer me stuff I enjoy without the clutter will be welcomed with open arms. This brokering of media can be done via brokerage houses, which can offer all kinds of cool additional features such as priority ticket sales to those with a love of a particular group, recommendations for similar media, access to fan sites, etc. Those folks who want to own stuff will remain, and can be serviced accordingly — like the vinyl fans are now. However, the vast majority of us simply want our media in a convenient package, in a convenient manner, whenever we conveniently want it.

Perhaps its this disconnect from the physical thing that’s not made this happen yet. Folks seem to want the “thing” when they buy something. For example, folks seems to associate music with the CD. I associate music with the artists. I’d prefer there to be a mechanism where I’m more tightly coupled with the artists. After all, it’s the artist that I’m interested in, not the plastic containers for their work. I prefer to get their art conveniently, which for much media today means digitally. It’s definitely already started — this move away from CDs — but it needs to happen in a cohesive way that ensure artists are compensated while consumers have the convenience digital media creates.

Yeah, it’s a totally different way to go with respect to media, but I think The New Yorker is on the right track. However, not being tethered to a disk is the next step. The Internet is ubiquitous. We need to head that way. Hopefully the media companies will help us get there.