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SmokeAndMirrors · 10-02-2011, 05:10 PM

I'm almost entirely paper-free at this point in my personal media consumption.

I work for a paper that still goes to print, and I still get the occasional handout in classes (though I encourage my professors to send me the files instead and many of them do, and I'm very involved in stepping up our web integration on the paper).

News? Online/RSS/recipes. Blogs? Same. Magazines? Rare for me, but online when I read them. Books? Digital. And I do find I read a lot more now than I did at any point in the past since I was in primary school.

I think the most surprising thing is actually books. As I got older and busier, I read fewer books and more news and short stories. Partly due to space, partly due to eyestrain, and partly due to having a back that doesn't like extra weight.

There's a lot of issues to solve, in terms of making books viable in the digital world. Shorter works are easier - you can ignore the eyestrain issue, and you can also lay them out on a typical website or mobile site. But books? That really did require a whole new formatting and screen approach.

I think ebooks will be as significant as the printing press. It's no surprise novel-reading rates were declining in an increasingly digital world where heavy bricks of paper really just don't fit into the lifestyles of a lot of people anymore. I know that was the primary reason for my reading decline.

And I think we're going to see a resurgence of the novel now that e-ink and ebook formats are available. It will be interesting to compare the numbers of people who report reading novels regularly in, say, 2015, versus 2005.

10-02-2011, 05:10 PM	#2
SmokeAndMirrors Addict Posts: 280 Karma: 2064388 Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: MN, US Device: Kobo Touch, Asus Eee Pad Slider	I'm almost entirely paper-free at this point in my personal media consumption. I work for a paper that still goes to print, and I still get the occasional handout in classes (though I encourage my professors to send me the files instead and many of them do, and I'm very involved in stepping up our web integration on the paper). News? Online/RSS/recipes. Blogs? Same. Magazines? Rare for me, but online when I read them. Books? Digital. And I do find I read a lot more now than I did at any point in the past since I was in primary school. I think the most surprising thing is actually books. As I got older and busier, I read fewer books and more news and short stories. Partly due to space, partly due to eyestrain, and partly due to having a back that doesn't like extra weight. There's a lot of issues to solve, in terms of making books viable in the digital world. Shorter works are easier - you can ignore the eyestrain issue, and you can also lay them out on a typical website or mobile site. But books? That really did require a whole new formatting and screen approach. I think ebooks will be as significant as the printing press. It's no surprise novel-reading rates were declining in an increasingly digital world where heavy bricks of paper really just don't fit into the lifestyles of a lot of people anymore. I know that was the primary reason for my reading decline. And I think we're going to see a resurgence of the novel now that e-ink and ebook formats are available. It will be interesting to compare the numbers of people who report reading novels regularly in, say, 2015, versus 2005.