Essayist and programmer Paul Graham has a great article he’s headlined Post-Medium Publishing.

In it he articulates that, “Almost every form of publishing has been organized as if the medium was what they were selling, and the content was irrelevant. . . . Now that the medium is evaporating, publishers have nothing left to sell.”

Graham’s uses some examples of modern content models – iTunes and digital books – as a way of demonstrating that consumers aren’t actually paying for the content, but are paying a tax, a toll, in order to access that content. Being able to successfully monetize that model, though, requires that you own the channel, as Apple does with iTunes.

Because a toll can’t be too expensive. “Once a toll becomes painful, people start to find ways around it, and that’s pretty easy with digital content,” writes Graham.

He ends optimistically, suggesting that change like this creates more than it destroys. “Indeed, the really interesting question is not what will happen to existing forms, but what new forms will appear.”

Thanks to Bruce Sterling for tweeting the citation.