There is a suggestion that this change in culture is entirely due to emerging technologies. I would disagree. Although I concede that new technological advances caused seismic shifts, I believe it is worth consider the social and political landscape of these changes, how and why these technologies were invented.
Just as Adam Curtis describes in his epic second installment of 'Machines of Loving Grace', there is a strong relationship between the material need for rare items and the digital realities that they are used to create. He cuts between scenes of oxford circus as people queue for the new playstation with images of armed conflict in the Congo over control of precious metals to sell to the west to build the playstation console.
I believe that disruptive technologies and societal relationships have an interdependent relationship. I think that this is true of publishing too. Disruptive technologies can be born out of a societal problem as we can only invent what we can dream and we can only dream of what we want (as opposed to what we have).
The explosion of information that was made possible by new digital technologies was build out of hacker cultures that were dependent on finding alternatives. Yes, the archetiture of the internet was built by governmental scaled institutions: ARPANET et al.... but it was the applications and the inventions of distribution that were mainly the produce of small groups of individuals working to find different ways of communicating across technology.
Publishing has and is adapting to disruptive technologies but I think that it is worth stressing that these technologies were built by people often for noble or problem-solving purposes.
With that in mind, what has been the disruption to publishing by technology? Some would say that it has been democratised by open access and by digital copies which in past 'future' predictions were considered cheaper (there not if the publishers overprice them!!!!). The notion of value added has to creep into the trade publishing model. If other people are allowing access to content free of charge then why would someone pay for content from a publisher such as penguin random house?
Value added could be the production of a printed book or the cost to institutions rather than end users for publishers to host and package open access content. Value added could be the curation of public domain content into attractive packages. Publishers, just as librarians, can be navigates to content, especially when it is so easy to become overwhelmed by content overload.
