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A.N.Wilson: 'The internet is destroying the world as we know it'.
Mr. Wilson is quite right, the internet is destroying the world as THEY know it. Should we mourn such a world? I do not think so (of course, this comment is NOT about books). The books may be cheap and ubiquitous from his point of view but it is no so from everyone's perspective. Books will always have a special charm and I hope they will always stay with us but, ultimately, electronic readers will provide a better reading experience, for less money, to more people.
Quote: 'Kindles flip from page to page. Presumably you can flip back a page, but even if you can do so in seconds, this will be longer than the split second that it takes us to turn back a page when you want to check the name of a character in a novel or to refresh your memory of who is speaking.'. It is a very safe bet that the paper book will lose the fast page flipping contest very soon. As for the memory refreshing, I expect the next gen. of e-readers to find me all occurrences of a specific word or a phrase in the read part of a book. It is a thing where a paper book definitely does not excel and never will.
In short, Mr. Wilson may be a writer, but I do not think he is a visionary.
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