Like me, many other people in this world remember using floppy disk drive. This was probably around the same time schools started to use Powerpoint with dialup internet (Netzero anyone?) but there was always a slight problem; the Powerpoint files couldn't fit in the floppy disk (forget about even emailing anything bigger than a couple hundred kBs). If you were lucky to have an Iomega Zip Drive, you had no problem with it. Then came compact discs with a whopping 700 MiBs then DVDs carrying 4.7 GBs of storage; the rewritable ones were always a hassle it seemed. Then came the USB drives and memory card that came in numerous company standards (e.g. Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo).
Storage is something we've been looking at in specifications of any device we buy including laptops, phones, tablets, cars and the list goes on. But look at the direction the industry is going with the accessibility of the Internet. The physical storage in devices haven't gone up like it did a decade ago and it's not because we use less storage. We are moving towards the "Cloud" or where the resources are just in a remote location which was only possible due to the convenience of the Internet. There will be much less need to actually have more than a few GBs of storage on any given device especially as Internet speeds increase.
This brings the importance of the services that we start to use as we continue to transition. No longer do we need to store GBs of songs, movies, shows, documents, or photos because we have it on the Internet already (or will have it soon). Think about it, we have iTunes, Google and its diverse products, Spotify, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, and so many others. We have moved into a service-oriented world and the older generations has to adapt to the new market. Purchasing content was become dynamic by distributing it has a service that is constantly being updated instead of buying just a specific file(s); this seems to benefit the provider and customer in multiple aspects (and of course they are down sides).
While there are consumer benefits, there are risks that we must recognize as we move into a service-oriented world. We give our trust to this service-providers that they will run reliably 24/7, respect personal/private data, and provide good customer service. Customers will have to continue to use (and pay for) the service (or some other service) to keep enjoying the content (e.g. for music/shows/movies) since you will no longer have the files locally (or own the content); though Amazon seems to be providing a digital copy on their servers when you purchase some albums through them. These services will have to provide a method of exporting (e.g. Google Docs) and maintain ownership of our personal data. There is also a greater risk for attacks on the content (including access control) and there will be more significant consequences when they do occur; again, we will rely on the service-providers to maintain the security for their products.