Are books obsolete?
July 21st, 2006 by Adam
People ask me all the time if books will ever become obsolete. I don’t think so. There is something unique and personal about a book that it’s digitization can never duplicate. Our culture still values whats original and unique. And books are some of the most unique creations of civilization. They are little mind bombs set to go off in your head when you least expect it.
I found this nice quote on the Booklad blog, where Dan Poynter discusses some interesting statistics on book reading. Check it out.
Jeff Jarvis also links to the Booklad post and provides some additional book stats (like 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year).
Posted in All, Future of Paper | 2 Comments » | Other posts by Adam
July 23rd, 2006 at 1:42 am
Here in the UK you will see the future of the book on a train journey. School kids have their noses in them! I suspect that it’s the same in the US. Titles like Harry Potter and Artemis Fowl have done much to stimulate reading in young people. I think the book is going to be with us for a while.
July 25th, 2006 at 8:59 am
There’s an interesting website (http://www.futureofthebook.org) that I’m following that posits that things may be shifting away from the printed page to the networked screen and that we may be using the word “book” in a very different way down the future. While I don’t believe that bound paper books are going away anytime soon, there’s something to be said about the possibilities of experiencing rich hybrid experiences that combine the best of the analog and digital realms.
http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/05/defining_the_networked_book_a.html
http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/04/the_networked_book_an_increasi.html