The office bookshelf is located at the back of the "pod" I share with four other folks. Being the bibliophile, I'd say that this is as it should be, except it's really a graveyard for programming books that people (myself among the guilty) are too cheap to just throw away.
Normally, my Frugal Inner Midwesterner would consider a Kindle an extravagance ("What kind of book needs batteries?" it scoffs). But using an e-reader for technical books is one application that makes perfect sense to me. It's not just avoiding the waste of paper. The same obsolescence of technical information could provide a renewing revenue stream for publishers. You, the consumer, pay full price for your first edition of the book, then an incremental cost for updates when you upgrade the software in question and need upgraded information. I can even imagine a scenario that gives you a choice between having multiple versions available (should you deem it worth the disk space) and a seamless upgrade to 100% new content.
In other words, the process of publishing software documentation takes a few steps in the direction of publishing the software itself. Which is ironic, given that (IIRC) the makers of the first serious PC business application (VisiCalc) were paid along the lines of a book-publishing model, mainly because no one knew any better at the time. That didn't work out so well, but that's not to say that bringing the two models closer in this case would necessarily be a bad idea.
Unfortunately, I very much doubt that book publishers (with notable exceptions like O'Reilly Press) would view it in that light. Which is sad, because this solution, to my mind, is pure upside. Most especially for the trees.
