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Books come in all shapes and sizes. Pretty much anyone in the world knows what one is, and most people know where to get one. Libraries around the world house vast amounts of books and although the Nazi’s burned a fair few, plenty more have been published since then. In fact, 300,000 new books are published worldwide per year! That’s quite a handfull!
Books seem to be undergoing a transition into the digital age. Microsoft and Google have announced that they are scanning millions of books into databases planning to make them available to the public and new products are released regularly with the capability of carrying eBooks, RSS feeds and large amounts of written data on small book sized flat screens. Plug these products into your PC and you can upload multiple books into one little portable product.
Some of these digital book readers use a special technology which reduces the power used by the items significantly. The pixels on the screen are effectively turned on and off when the pages are flipped. Once the page is showing, the unit doesnt use any power at all.
Many people are predicting the end of libraries and books, but i for one cannot see the humble book dissapear without putting up a fight. The convenience, low cost, robustness, character and ease of a book will keep it among one of the best inventions of all time.
I also enjoy the certain social aspect which books can bring to a community. You can see what type of book someone might be reading from the cover, how they take care of their posessions, whether they can afford to use and abuse their books for other uses or even whether they share and borrow books between friends.
“Don’t judge a book by it’s cover” could have the meaning changed if you cannot actually see the book cover. If someone, for example, is reading from a personal digital reader then there may be no way of telling what kind of book and how big it is without asking. Many of those chatup lines and conversation breakers seen on movies just wouldn’t be the same when presented in a techno age!
One the other hand, taking a large number of books out of the library with the swipe of your palm reader would be so much easier than lugging back a serious load. Think of all the young students backs which would be saved, and the limit put on excuses when a book might have been taken out of the library by someone else. Instead of having to return the books their use simply expires and you have to return to the library or to the library website to renue your loan.
Interesting ideas. What will happen to the book. Afterall, it’s free to write your own online book and distribute it free of charge.
