Like a lot of New Yorkers I take a train to work every day.  I drive down to my local train station, park in pretty much the same spot each day in the commuter lot, and then stand at a particular spot on the platform to wait for the train.  A cluster of people gather in the same spot for the same train every morning and over the years we have gotten to know one another.  A couple are lawyers, others work on Wall Street or in the media industry.  For years we have stood together in our cluster clutching our newspapers, reading about (and commenting on) the latest news of the Yankees or Washington politics or whatever anyone felt like saying during the few minutes before the train arrived. 

This morning I realized that not a single one of us in our little cluster was holding a newspaper or any other form of print media.  Some were holding Smart Phones.  A few had Kindles.  Two had iPads.  I was surprised and so were the others when I pointed it out, particularly since none of us would ever be mistaken for Silicon Valley leading edge technology types.

Maybe it means nothing.  Maybe my little commuter cluster is completely atypical of the rest of the world, where people still hold newspapers and magazines and books.  Or maybe I've just seen the proverbial "canary in the coal mine", telling me that something has really changed.  I don't know...

A few years ago I got into a Twitter debate with a group of people about when the last bit of physical media would be distributed.  That is, when all newspapers, magazines, books, music, video, movies etc. would cease to be distributed in physical form, and would only be downloadable as digital media.  Quite a few believed that the end of physical distribution would be by January 1, 2014.  I argued that that was preposterous -- that newspapers, for one, would certainly to be printed and delivered for at least another generation.  Print offers many advantages to digital, and I assumed that those advantages would remain in place for a long time to come.

This morning, standing on the train station platform looking at my cluster of commuting comrades, I began to think that maybe I had been on the wrong side of that debate.