It's happening - you already have the "access packs" which gives the students a permanent digital version of the course manual, and instructors can use a hardcopy library manual during onsite training in locations where internet access is a bit pants (such as pretty much everywhere I've ever worked, actually!) I'm pretty sure the plan is for all materials to become electronic, and although I like e-Learning for some courses, I wouldn't want to teach Pro courses (or Tec, although I'm not a Tec instructor (yet!)) without personal student - instructor interaction.
I don't think it's necessarily a PADI thing - I think it's just inevitable. The e-book market is already vast, and like many folk, I prefer having an actual paper book in my hand, but I can't cart them all around the world with me, so my Kindle has been one of the best investments I ever made. There's a whole generation coming that will have grown up in purely electronic classrooms without ever having laid their hands on a physical book. I don't think hardcopy will disappear completely any time soon, but it's for sure the way the world is heading, and printing and physically distributing that stuff (plus local import tax in many countries) is very expensive, and the expense involved in purchasing a hardcopy manual is not entirely the fault of the agency involved. Electronic distribution will inevitably be cheaper.
I think it won't be long before you'll be able to plug the PADI OW manual into some kind of virtual reality headset and actually experience the underwater world while you're studying it. The technology already exists, and it wasn't that long ago that personal computers were expensive luxuries, and the mainstay of gaming was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons...
Times they are a-changing!
C.
