In April 1977, Steve Jobs introduced the breakthrough Apple II. Twenty-six years ago, on January 24, 1984, Jobs introduced the Macintosh. In October 2001 he brought us the iPod, and at Macworld Expo in January 2007 he introduced the iPhone. Today, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco, he unveiled Apple's new creation—a mobile digital tablet called the iPad.

Some see the product as a super iPhone or potential laptop replacement—but Jobs, who over the last 30 years has dramatically influenced the personal-computer and the music and phone industries, is hardly content simply to announce a new device.

Apple's visionary goal could be no less than the recreation of the whole publishing industry by providing an integrated hardware, software, and distribution ecosystem: a total system that will start to change the way content is created, consumed, and purchased on mobile devices.

It's quite possible that Apple will reference or evoke the Sumerian clay tablets dating back 5,000 years. These tablets, written in cuneiform script, are the earliest known writing system. They chronicled stories of creation, the great flood, and the arrival of Halley's comet, as well as the commercial activity of the period.

Apple may believe that their electronic slate will have as dramatic an impact on information as did the ancient Mesopotamian writing system.

Of course, Apple is not new to driving dramatic change in the publishing industry. In the mid-'80s, Apple's Graphical User Interface (GUI) on the Macintosh, along with Aldus (PageMaker), Adobe (PostScript), and Hewlett Packard (LaserJet) introduced desktop publishing and gave powerful but easy to use tools to a new generation of designers. (To get a look at some Apple products that weren't game changers, click here.)

For the last decade and a half, digital publishing has been evolving from print to the Web. Generally, it's not been a happy experience for publishers. The traditional print models have not transitioned well.

Brands' direct interactions with their readers have been weakened, audiences fragmented, and content is widely created and distributed across the Web. Search and social networks have had a dramatic impact on traditional publishers.

Trying to protect legacy businesses by trying to create digital replica models of print products, especially magazines and newspapers, resulted in a dreadful user experience. Content, which had been designed for viewing in portrait orientation, was forced into a landscape mode forcing the reader to pan, scroll, and zoom.

For centuries, print publishing has been a world of publisher-controlled, static information. However, we're now on the verge of having dynamic, real-time, multimedia content delivered to our personal mobile computing devices in a format that is optimized for the device. Publishers now have another opportunity to work out the digital opportunities.