I can only wonder how long until the whole model behind Word gets perceived as completely obsolete.
Word comes from the ages when you edited a document, passed it along and then printed it for someone who should read it. This is not what we do anymore.
I'm not sure about this, the only part I don't see happening anymore (at least, not as often) is printing. We still create and edit documents, then pass them along (email, IM, web, etc). Are you saying we'll have some completely new concept beyond documents?
That said, I still do see lots of printing. For example when we group together for discussions it is a whole lot easier to have a paper copy that I can doodle on, make notes, etc than to try and drag a laptop in (tablet or not).
> Are you saying we'll have some completely new concept beyond documents?
Don't know about you, but just about every important technical document here resides in a versioned wiki. If we print it for, like you say, discussions, the doodles are usually merged with the document in the wiki when the discussion is over. The wiki page (or pages) is the document. It retains history, authorship and is the canonical reference for that information.
That said, this is more common in the IT-related areas. Lawyers, among others, tend to resist technical innovation. I just imagine how hard it was for them to adopt typewriters.
Word comes from the ages when you edited a document, passed it along and then printed it for someone who should read it. This is not what we do anymore.