Is it only a matter of time?

...before every aspect of our culture is available "on demand?"

As it is now, with a MacBook feeding a digital video and audio out to HDMI and attached to my stereo and television, I can stream movies and shows from Hulu, YouTube, and Netflix (and many others), not to mention streaming my music wirelessly via AirTunes.

But how long before *any* television show, book, magazine, film or album/song is instantly available at a click? The capability is there- it seems like it's only a matter of time...  how will our artistic output be affected by a culture of free (or is it value-less?) culture.

I still haven't found any truly good books on the history of the world wide web (recs anyone?). I have found some good books (like Where Wizards Stay Up Late- not the best writing but great information) on the history of the Internet as it grew out of the military, ARPANET, Eisenhower and Xerox PARC, but nothing specifically on the earlier days of the WWW as BBS's were on their way out.

I'm striving to better understand the wave of the web- more like a tsunami- plowing through cultural commerce, news, entertainment, artistic output. [I know, I should have been at some SxSW panels this year.] In the earlier days of the web, when I was in high school (92-96) everyone who was online seemed to share EVERYTHING- documents, pics, music, anything you could wait for to transfer over the dial-up. Now that EVERYONE is online (the term itself is in decay- as everyone is increasingly "becoming" online) entire industries are collapsing under the weight of shared culture, the cloud, and the hive mind. If you're into these ideas, check out Jaron Lanier's You Are Not A Gadget.