This past winter I was visiting my parents. One evening we were all sitting around the dining room table, having coffee and tea, each of us tuned into our own digital devices. I had my MacBook out and was working on some Swift code. My mom had her tablet out and was busy texting and scoffing at the days Facebook drama. And my dad had a small laptop out and was busy watching a stream of the local evening news.

That moment really stuck with me, for a few reasons. To start with my parents are not cord cutters or techno-nerds. I still remember the years of resistance my dad put up before he finally replaced our BetaMax video cassette player with a VHS one (which was by then only a few years before DVD’s would hit the market). It is not that they are luddites, but they have always, even when they were younger, had a resistance to new technologies. They would never adopt it until it was absolutely necessary. That they had seemingly overnight begun to drop a lot of their traditional television viewing for time in front of their tablets and laptops was a clear sign the true mainstreaming of digital distribution was beginning. Read More