This whole thing reminds me of a short Sci-Fi story I read. Basically explorers find a series of planets that were obviously inhabited at one time but the only remains are these small metal "marbles" all over the place. No other artifacts of any type.
Eventually they figure out that the alien society had built/integrated nanotechnology to such an extent that they just used it for every physical need. Then one day "something" happened and all the nano-machines stopped working all at the same time, reverting to these small metal spheres and the alien race couldn't survive the drop from "super-tech" to "pre-tool stone age".
It was a pretty good "all your eggs in one basket" kind of story.
Basically, if there are people out there still printing with Gutenberg style presses, and hand manufacturing blackpowder firearms, and using film cameras,...I doubt printed books will ever disappear.
We might see less of them, but there are still functions where a dead-tree edition is the most appropriate choice.
|