Quote:
Originally Posted by eGeezer
I think equating ebooks to cell phones is a bit of a stretch. Cell phones grew more rapidly in un-developed countries because there was not reliable (or any whatsoever) telecommunications infrastructure and communication is what people do.
Communication is interaction with others, and the human animal is social, no matter how anti-social our actions may appear. Reading is going off by yourself and shutting every(thing)one out for a while. Reading is something you HAVE to do for school, but not something that will drive the major portion of the younger populous to spend $200 for a device with which to engage in a solitary activity. (And I may be wrong, but I believe the cell phone growth in all countries was initially driven by the young adult, then by the teens and below before it really took off with older adults.)
I agree with those many others who have stated it often on this forum. I don't believe pbooks are significantly threatened by ebooks for at least 10 years, I don't believe publication of new pbooks will disappear completely within my lifetime (of course, I'm 64, so I can safely say that, lol), although maybe in 15 years, demand might be noticeably diminished.
There is no doubt that pbooks will eventually disappear, because we have already seen that in the near future, Capt Kirk lives in a truly paperless environment.
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You are probably correct about today's schools. But for me when I was that age I easily spend several hundred bucks a year on paperbacks and I bought used at yard sales, thrift shops and what not...never new because I could buy 10-for-1 back then. I read anything and everything I could. And I still studied, played baseball, football, golf, backpacking, fishing as well as the normal teen and kid stuff...just seems there were more hours in a day back then I suppose. Plus things outside were, well, just more for the fun of it rather than the "go to war" everything must be labeled today.
Even today I simply never bonded with video games of any sort...not when I could buy a few boxes of books instead for the cost of a single video game that would bore me no end in short order.