Richard Ekman has an editorial in today's Washington Post looking at what can be gained from fast and easy access to knowledge currently inaccessible to all but the most tenacious researchers. In my opinion, an ideal world is one in which knowledge is easily acquired, so more time can be spent understanding the newly acquired knowledge.

Ekman points out the parallels between the resistance by publishers in the book industry to what we've seen in other industries in the past (reg. required):

The Books Google Could Open

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that publishers have resisted an important technology instead of figuring out how to use it to their advantage. Music publishers a century ago tried to stop the manufacture of player pianos because they feared that sales of sheet music would decline. In fact, player pianos helped increase the number of buyers of sheet music.

New technologies and new ways of doing business can be disruptive, but they are inevitable. The transition to new technologies can be smooth or rough, depending on the attitudes of the institutional actors. The goal is to make more of the world's information readily available to users.

I believe all books will eventually be available online. But I can't predict in who's lifetime this will occur. Can you?