Tablets, e-readers and content, oh my!

This should be a big week (and maybe month) for new reading/watching technology.

At least two new e-readers will be announced to compete with Amazon's Kindle, Barnes and Noble's Nook and Sony's Reader at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. 

Plastic Logic is introducing the long-awaited Que. The Skiff will be sold (and wired) by Sprint with content cooperation from Hearst Corp. Both are billed as larger and sleeker than the other e-readers, with touchscreens.


Meanwhile, Apple plans an announcement later this month that many believe will be a new tablet computer that will include a touchscreen and video. As David Carr mentions in his New York Times column today, Microsoft and HTC also appear to be developing tablets. But Freescale apparently will get there first this week with its $200 tablet device.


Ironically, back in the early and mid-90s, the late newspaper company Knight-Ridder funded a Boulder laboratory that predicted the tablet and its use for news (check out the vid above! priceless!). The technology just wasn't there at the time.


Now, the technology is beyond what Knight-Ridder imagined - millions interact with friends known and unknown via facebook, twitter, etc. We post and view videos on everything from guitar instruction to humor on youtube. The ability of consumers to create their own product now competes with newsrooms, which once experienced a bit of a content monopoly. The music moguls, too, suffered when Apple's iPod and iTunes took over.


David Bennahum tweeted yesterday that the new technology may threaten television most of all. He makes a great point, as does Bono in his Sunday Times op-ed, where he questions whether consumers will be willing to continue paying for video content as it becomes more easily downloadable.

Meanwhile, advertising remains a question in the world of media. Warren Berger posits that the era of advertising is ending in his great book on design, Glimmer. Instead, businesses are looking for ways to interact with consumers, instead of simply broadcast one-way messages to them.



What does all this mean for content and content producers? 


One of my questions as a journalist and one interesting in politics is this: Who will provide content that brings community together instead of polarizing different sides, that answers difficult, complex questions, that points out potentially unpopular concepts/ideas? 


Other questions: Are consumers willing to settle for mediocre content as long as it's free? Will creators be willing to produce quality content for free or for goodwill offerings?



As always, i don't have answers. Just questions i'm mulling.